


To See What He Could Kill

by Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn



Category: Outlander (TV)
Genre: "Black Jack" survives Culloden, 18th Century War, AU, Alternate Universe, Boston, Craigh na dun, F/M, Frank Randall travels through the stones, Grief/Mourning, Jamie and Claire in hiding, Loss of Innocence, Magic, Mary Hawkins in 1948, Mary and Alex, Miscarriage, Rape, Sadism, Scotland, Sexual Violence, Standing Stones, Stone Circle, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:08:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28402983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn/pseuds/Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn
Summary: Jonathan Wolverton Randall lives through the Battle of Culloden. Returning home to a young, grieving, pregnant wife, his self-control will be tested and, ultimately, broken. In desperation, a distraught Mary flees to the standing stones at craigh na dun, and unwittingly travels forward in time to 1948. Sent to live with Claire and Frank (of whom she cannot help but foster an incurable fear), she is forced to acclimate to a bizarre new setting in 20th century Boston. But when Claire realizes that Mary had miscarried Alex Randall's child back in 1746, and is now pregnant with "Black Jack" Randall's child (Frank's all-important ancestor), all three of them must travel back through the stones to the past: Frank into an unavoidable existential crisis, Claire into the waiting arms of Jamie Fraser, and Mary into the considerably less warm hands of her sadistic husband "Black Jack" Randall, to secure Frank's life...
Relationships: Alex Randall/Mary Hawkins Randall, Claire Beauchamp/Frank Randall, Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser, Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall/Mary Hawkins Randall
Comments: 28
Kudos: 28





	1. 1. Touch

The dense, musky air is little short of freezing inside the dark, wood-paneled room at McGilvrey’s Boarding House, and though the light from the fireplace flickers across the walls, the flames do barely anything to fight the cold. Mary would get up and stoke the meager fire, if she weren’t so reluctant to brave the chilly floor. Besides, she doesn’t dare leave the small, sweat-dampened bed; doesn’t dare leave Alex’s side. Under the thin film of the bedsheets, his body—larger and more substantial than hers, but undeniably weakening by the day—is burning up, and the harsh juxtaposition of his febrile temperature against the wet, bone-cutting cold of the air beyond the haven of the bed makes Mary feel feverish and ill, herself.

In the daytime, the sound of his tortured coughing echoes down the hall outside. But right now, in the guarded and precious center of the night, all is silent but for the infrequent snapping of the wood that feeds the fire. Not even the streets of Edinburgh below the drafty casement window offer up any sound above the whispering of a gentle wind, rolling in from the Highlands.

The waning flames from the fireplace across the room, combined with the flickering of the candles on the bedside table, illuminate Alex’s face, and make him look just a bit more healthy, in the warmth of their light. Momentarily, Mary can imagine that they are back in France, when the coughing could be excused as a short-term reaction to some allergen—and it wouldn’t have been any wonder, being as surrounded by flowers as they were. So many warm, subtly exciting hours had been spent in those extravagant gardens, whose well-trimmed paths bore witness to their first flirtations, their first confidences in each other, their first gentle touches of wrists and fingers.

Her head on the pillow, watching the slight fluttering of his eyelids, Mary remembers the other beds they’ve shared together. She had been so afraid to be touched after that night of terror on the street in Paris, when even Claire, the strongest person she’s ever met, had been helpless against the three cloaked offenders who had trapped them there on the hill; had violated her so irrevocably. That kind of physical horror, she had quickly learned, never truly goes away.

But Alex had managed, somehow, to bring her back to what resembled safety inside of her body. He had comforted her, in his gentle way, and she had been so valuable in his arms, so protected against his skin, with the gentle pressing of his considerate body within and around hers, completing her, and his low, gorgeously strained whispers of love and devotion.

In recent weeks, he has become much too tired and ill to touch her in that way—and, too, he has made a habit of objecting when she gets too close to him, for fear of his sickness spreading to her fragile lungs. Were he awake, now, and not caught in one of the increasingly few blessed spells of seldom-managed sleep, he would tell her not to touch him; to be careful. “It’s not forever,” he had said, and would say again. “Just ‘till I heal up.” But, for now, she revels in the feeling of his warmth so close to her, his skin, however burning, a comfort at her side.

He’s thirteen years older than she, but he’s never treated her like a child; not like other suitors, not like her father or the Duke of Sandringham. Perhaps, she realizes now, because he is so like a child, himself. Not in an immature way, but in the beautiful way that the very young possess, the quietness and the quality of having wide open eyes—both the physical eyes, and the eyes of the soul.

Suddenly, Mary finds herself brought to tears at the sight of his face, at the thought of how she loves him so, and that he loves her, in return; at the thought of how lucky she is. But, hurriedly, she gathers herself.

Mary has always been a girl with a tendency to cry often and without need of much provocation. And while others had often chastised her for such hyper-sensitive behavior, Alex has always loved her sensitivity, her gentle tears. He has told her that she is beautiful, even when she cries. Once, she’d started sobbing uncontrollably at the sight of three young birds perched on the edge of the balcony railing outside their window, and he’d kissed the tears from her cheeks, smiling at her with all the warmth of the sun.

Were he awake, perhaps she would bear her present tears proudly. But for now, in this moment of aloneness, when he is unconscious, she knows she has no choice but to gather herself. She must not wallow. She has to be strong for herself, so that she can be strong for Alex. There have been times when she has needed him badly, and she still needs him—but right now, it is her turn to be needed, and to provide.

So, stifling a sniffle, Mary rubs at the remaining tears on her cheeks with the back of her hand and, pulling herself together, eases her tiny weight off of the mattress, so as not to wake her beloved Alex, and tiptoes across the frigid room to feed and tend the fireplace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the final episodes of season two, Mary Hawkins and Alex Randall are noticeably non-physical. In the scenes when he is confined to his bed in the Inn (coughing, ailing, and -- slowly -- dying), Mary barely touches him at all. Though they clearly have intimacy, it does not extend to the physical onscreen. Now, this might be because of propriety, or because both Alex and Mary are very shy, or both. But, though these are valid reasons for the notably limited physical contact, I wanted to add Alex's aversion to getting Mary sick into the mix, to give that a more solid explanation.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this little introduction. The goal was to establish a voice for Mary which gave her a distinct backstory and identity, while looking forward, towards the darkness that is sure to be inflicted upon her at Jonathan's hands. She really is a tender, thoughtful, and (quietly) powerful character. A lovely tapestry for Black Jack to shred to pieces...
> 
> Written and posted in the dead of night, so please excuse any typos or grammatical errors!
> 
> I plan to post more bite-sized chapters (albeit emotionally loaded) such as this one, so you can expect another soon enough!
> 
> Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn  
> Tuesday 29 December 2020


	2. 2. The Captain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your wonderful (and surprisingly prompt) feedback! It brings me such joy to read your insightful comments, and to see your kudos and bookmarks! There’s nothing like that sort of engagement to keep the muse well-kindled. 
> 
> There are a few brief uses of dialogue from the episodes in this chapter, so credit for that goes to the writers, not me.
> 
> Oh, and also… Enter Jonathan Randall. I really hope I do him justice.

A brief but intentional knock at the door jolts Mary from her sleep, a few hours later. She had managed to get an hour or so of rest the night before, but now, the grogginess clears from her mind, and she becomes immediately sensitive to the cold light streaming through the casement window, and the sounds of the city slowly waking up and churning into motion below.

Nervous as to whom might be at the door, she quickly gets out of the bed, standing uncertainly at its foot and looking earnestly towards the turning doorknob. But her hammering, anxious heart is put at ease when Alex’s older brother Jonathan appears, and a wave of relief comes over her.

“John!” she whispers with a gasp, stepping towards him before hesitating, and turning her head to look meaningfully at Alex. His body is still managing to hold onto sleep, but it’s rapidly wearing away, his breathing becoming more ragged by the moment. It will probably only be a few short minutes before he wakes up again, but Mary tries not to be saddened— he had been lucky to sleep for as long as he did; lucky to sleep, at all.

Captain Jonathan Randall, his neck stiff in accordance with an admirably-kept military posture, nods his understanding and keeps quiet. 

“We didn’t know you would visit again so soon,” the girl continues to whisper, in a diluted version of her usual excited manner. And then, looking over his common clothes and coat, “What happened to your uniform?”

“I was given leave to see you,” he responds in kind, looking again towards the fitfully sleeping Alex. “I didn’t want to attract attention.”

Mary starts to smile, but then a rush of pink lightens her cheeks as she realizes that she stands before him in nothing but her thin nightgown. And he notices, too as she shyly angles herself away from him.

For a moment, he looks at her, caught unawares, the blue light from the window making visible the outline of her tiny body underneath the white fabric of her chemise.

But then, abruptly, he turns away to close the door, listening to the rustling sounds behind him as Mary quickly grabs her night robe and wraps it around her slight self. The girl feels her head grow heavy with awkwardness—she’d been indecent, and had evidently cast off a significant portion of her embarrassment onto Jonathan.

He has to take care to collect himself before turning back towards her, and takes advantage of the few private seconds he has, facing the door, to breathe in and out measuredly, to press his tongue into his cheek and relax his shoulders.

When he turns around again, she is looking at him with wide eyes and the whisper of a smile on her full lips, her own shame overpowered by the sight of him standing there. He has displayed a benevolence with his money, and invariably his presence brightens his younger brother’s spirits—and Jonathan knows that this makes Mary feel inclined to grovel at his feet. Normally, this sort of knowledge would cause an intense and gratifying pressure to coil in the pit of his stomach… or lower. But in this instance, with this particular child, the knowledge of her admiration breeds something disturbingly close to pity.

The little smile on her face brightens slowly by degrees, making it clear to him that she is confused by his silence, but not afraid. “Would you like some tea?” she whispers, her eyebrows raising brightly in spite of her circumstances.

He nods his head in agreement, and goes to sit down at Alex’s side, ever-so-carefully easing his weight onto the edge of the mattress and placing the back of his hand against his younger brother’s cheek. Usually, in silence, he feels his power elevated over those around him. But in this specific silence, he feels small and dark, an unpleasant feeling that nearly makes him queasy. He looks down at the pale, sickness-stricken face of his sibling, and a jolt of panic races into his heart—a panic just as potent as an intense bout of violent desire; but this time, he is the victim.

Quickly, the Captain turns his head away from the sight, looking instead at the small curve of Mary’s back as she kneels by the fireplace to heat the teapot.

She is a beautiful child, no doubt, tendrils of her dark hair plastered to her neck by the dampness of sleep, and of her lover’s sickly warmth. A pretty little wisp of a girl, with a natural look of fear in her large eyes. It’s not difficult for Jonathan to see why his brother had taken to her so quickly, and with such passion—as had been related to him by way of his brother’s constant stream of letters from Paris, two years before. He can imagine that, in the more substantial sunlight of that country, her beauty had been much greater than it is now. Yet, a certain prettiness remains in her features, serving as an echo of early womanhood, now, more than childhood, though the stress of these past weeks has taken a visible toll of fatigue and frailty on her.

It’s a tender and childish beauty; the type of beauty that would be inclined to tempt Jonathan. And though he wouldn’t dare touch her, for Alex’s sake, sometimes he’s had thoughts about her at night. Thoughts which have consistently made him… dare he think it… uncomfortable and even ashamed. Ashamed in a way such thoughts had never made him feel before; in a way that mystifies and paralyzes his coarse sensibilities.

The girl brings him some tea once the kettle has been thoroughly heated, and he takes a number of silent sips while Mary goes over to the wardrobe and selects her clothes for the day. Jonathan looks with an increasingly sick feeling at Alex’s pallid face and, welcoming any distraction and noticing that Mary is having some difficulty getting her corset on by herself, can think of nothing to do but offer his aid.

Setting the tea down on the bedside table, and blowing out the low-burned candles, seeing as the window provides enough light, now, he stands and approaches her in his creaking shoes.

“May I be of service?” he suggests, making her turn halfway around with a startled flush on her face, considering him for a moment before agreeing with a demure nod which makes his stomach roil. He takes the corset in his hands and skillfully sets about tightening it, his ears hypersensitive to the sound of her little shallow breaths. 

Halfway through the process, a terrible temptation enters his mind, to tug a little too tight at the strings, to see what sound he might squeeze out of her, were he to do so. It would be simple and easily passed off as accidental, especially to one so naive and averse to argument as she.

But he resists with an extraordinary (and, he thinks to himself, with a satisfaction that has his tongue pressing at the corner of his mouth) _godlike _quantity of self-control.__

___Control, _he reminds himself as he tightens the last of the laces, and ties them at the small of her back, breathing in, and then out again.__ _ _

_____Control. ____ _ _ _

______A small smile appears on his lips, and the muscles in his abdomen tighten in diluted glee. Accusations of witchood against that incorrigible but delightfully sharp bitch Claire Fraser had carried a special sort of irony for Jonathan Randall. He is no stranger to magic words._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Thank you,” Mary whispers shyly, once he’s finished, and stepped away. When he blinks, the hot purple insides of his eyelids bear a fleeting but significant image; or, more of a movement, and he imagines for a second that he is gripping the child’s slender neck and pinning her to the wardrobe by it, making her gasp and grab with delicious helplessness at his powerful forearm._ _ _ _ _ _

______He opens his eyes and nods to her, smoothing back the stray strands of his hair, and turning to sit by Alex, refraining from looking at her again until she’s finished the rest of the dressing process, and stands fully clothed in a teal blue dress._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Go to the apothecary down the street,” he says at length. Mary looks at him obediently and intently, her eyes brightening when he hands a pouch of coins to her, entrusting them to her completely. She takes the pouch in her hands and nods to him, but then glances regretfully at Alex, whose wheezing has begun to grow louder, a sign that he will soon wake. Something in her very bones resists leaving him. But Jonathan captures her worried eyes with his gaze, and promises, “I’ll look after him,” with an undeniable faithfulness which eases her parting, if only slightly._ _ _ _ _ _

______The girl nods, and almost turns to go on her way, but then just as promptly comes back, and places a small, cold hand on his forearm, looking at him. It seems as though she’s about to burst into tears, and his body tenses, preparing for a distasteful show of emotion which only his unconscious brother is fit to cope with. But she resists the urge to cry, and only says simply, barely above a breath, “ _Thank you _, John.”___ _ _ _ _ _

________She smiles at him, her eyes wide and damp, and the Captain manages to stiffen his jaw and nod in response, his heartbeat deepened and quickened by the intensifying hoarseness of his brother’s desperate breathing, less than an arm’s length away._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________It seems an eternity before she finally turns from him again, and the moment the door closes behind her, Jonathan feels a sensation flood his chest: the pale relief that comes when an imminent danger is taken, at least for the time being, out of reach._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Let me know your thoughts/feelings/concerns.
> 
> Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn  
> Tuesday 29 December 2020


	3. 3. Dawning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise, once I make it out of the rut where I'm basically restating everything that happens in the actual episodes, then these chapters should become a little less long-winded. But for now, the upcoming two-and-a-half are basically going to be centering upon the events that take place in the episode "The Hail Mary."So most (if not all) of the dialogue in this chapter is taken directly from the lines therein, or closely paraphrased.

Alex Randall feels his body compress unforgivingly around his lungs with each cough, the midmorning light harsh on his face from the nearby window. From the bed, he weakly watches Mary (his sweet, darling Mary), darting between the table holding various medicines and the kettle of hot water over the fire, trying to help him, but to no avail. What can only be described as anger takes over a small corner of his consciousness. In the past days, the chaos of his body’s sickness has become inescapable, and he feels very much trapped inside of it. His body is unsteady and wobbly, and as Mary approaches the bed, he reaches out to her, but misses, his hand landing heavily on the sheets. 

His ears are buzzing, but he can tell that she’s trying to get him to drink some sort of tea. He wants to tell her that he can’t even breathe, let alone swallow, but talking, it seems, has also been eliminated from the deck of cards at his disposal, by the ceaseless hacking cough that seems about to split his chest in two.

Johnny had been there when he’d woken up, and had stayed to help Mary for a time after she’d returned from the apothecary with replenished bottles of medicine. But some sort of errand had drawn him away, from which he still hasn’t returned; and so the poor little thing has been struggling over him for hours, the resulting exhaustion evident in the high-strung pitch of her small, nervous voice. A horrible guilt for his condition, his neediness, overcomes him. But, at the same time, Alex Randall can’t help but be very glad that it’s Mary working over him, and not some impersonal stranger who would be more apt to become impatient and unkind with him than Mary ever would be.

Another heaving chain of coughs overtakes his body and his hands tighten around the blood-spotted rag in his hands, twisting it anxiously.

Mary holds out the cup of tea to him desperately, and he turns his focus to the wood paneling of the wall opposite the bed. He has memorized this miserable little room, and knows how many panels and planks of wood make up each wall, and each shutter. At the start of this whole ordeal, losing himself in the repetitive act of counting the pieces over and over had helped him to recover control of his breathing. But, by now, the method has become ineffective, and so he continues to cough hopelessly, looking instead at Mary’s pale face, her gentle eyes filled with terror.

She grows closer to him, dangerously close, but he has no air with which to protest, for her safety. “Please, Alex—” she says, nearly crying. Doubtless, she would be, where her eyes not suffering a dry spell after all the sobbing she’d fallen victim to, earlier. “I put some arsenic in this tea…”

It seems to Alex as though he may faint from the pressure on his chest, and the dizzying pain that plagues his throat. But just then, Claire Fraser, who he recognizes instantly, enters the room, and quickly crosses towards the bed to Mary’s aid. The latter quickly takes a step back from the bed, relieved to be in the presence of an older woman who knows what she’s doing and knows how to take charge of a situation. With lightning-quick efficiency, Claire helps to hoist Alex’s upper body up, and prop him, more upright, against the pillows and the headboard.

“Arsenic will bring color to his cheeks, but it won’t help his coughing” she explains to Mary with a businesslike brusqueness, but with a deeper edge of consideration and empathy in her voice, which makes her feel almost like a mother to the girl.

Alex manages to gather his breath together for a handful of seconds, still wheezing as he manages to say, “Madam Fraser! How good it is to see you,” before lapsing into a near-fit of heavy, desperate breathing, which makes Mary suppress a whimper.

Claire, who had come seeking to apologize for her attempts to split the two of them apart back in France, sees more than ever how wrong she had been to do so. She feels, being in the presence of the two of them, as though she is infringing upon something holy, and her eyes droop in guilt at her actions. But, with just one glance into Alex’s hazel eyes, she knows that all of it has already been forgiven, and he gives her a small nod, and what he can manage of a smile to confirm her thoughts, before again struggling to breathe, the coughing starting to build up again.

“And you, Alex,” she responds.

“Save your breath!” interjects Mary, looking desperately between Claire and her lover, dreading the terrible, perilous sound of Alex’s coughing.

“She’s right,” confirms the woman, setting a meaningful hand on Alex’s arm before standing up. “I’ll prepare a poultice to ease the muscles in your chest and back.”

Mary looks after her, relieved beyond belief that Claire has come. She would already be bursting into tears, to be sure, if she weren’t there, at her own helplessness, and she knows that the brief hostility she’d felt towards the woman when they’d bumped into each other at the apothecary earlier had been unfounded and silly. Alex, too, though again caught up in a bout of tense coughs, seems to give off an air of relief. He looks lovingly up at Mary, who reaches for him, and he allows her, without argument, to hold his hand.

Claire is leaning over the fire when she hears Alex exclaim from behind her, “Johnny! Back so soon!” And something in the wavering but joyful sound of his voice conjures up a memory of the first time she saw a performance of Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” and cried at the intermingled purity and tragedy of the poor Tiny Tim.

But promptly, the way a chill wind will take away a pleasant thought, the sound of footsteps in the doorway turn her head, and the sight of the man who stands there erases any nostalgic or remotely comforting feelings from her heart. A black and freezing feeling dominates her blood, and her insides suddenly feel reptilian at the sight of her husband’s tormentor… and her other husband’s all-important ancestor. The two extremes of her experiences and her livelihood entwined cruelly but inescapably in one vile, impulsive and mercurial individual who has come to prove inescapable.

“You remember Madam Fraser,” Alex continues, addressing Jonathan Randall—who, Claire has to remind herself, is the young man’s older brother and poor Mary’s future husband, and not someone who can be strangled to death at the moment. Besides, she has already promised to leave that job to Jamie on the battlefield at Culloden, just days from now.

Jonathan considers the woman for a moment, seeming to read her thoughts, but not treating her to his common self-satisfied smirk, the hard wall of his face remaining firmly and impenetrably encoded. Claire thinks, for a moment, that she has managed to see beyond it, when some small muscle in his jaw twitches and he seems to chew on something invisible inside his mouth.

But just then, he turns away from her, going to his brother’s bedside, and touching Mary’s arm in greeting, leaving Claire to stare coldly into space. “So good to see you, Johnny,” says Alex, just above a whisper, his chest heaving weakly with each shuddering syllable. Jonathan Randall sits down on the bed next to his brother, and touches the side of his face tenderly with the back of his hand.

The Captain glances for a moment towards Mary, and suddenly, remembering the thoughts he’d had about her that morning, feels a real pang of distress and regret… the way he’d thought of squeezing her corset tight enough to hurt her, without once considering the baby she carries inside her, who may have been harmed in the process of getting his sick gratification.

All at once, Mary becomes something very important to Jonathan Randall; if only because she is so precious to Alex, and carrying his child… A child who will soon be the last remaining part of him.

Clare, suddenly ill and conflicted, starts for the door. But Mary, noticing her movement, rushes to block her way, the force of her meek and desperate anxiety making even her small twig of a body equal to a thick, high fortress wall in strength. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

The girl looks up at Claire in desperation, and the woman is forced to shake off whatever had come over her, before. Of course it’s impossible for her to leave, now. The poor child needs her, and Alex needs her, too, and she’ll be damned before she lets that bastard, the older Randall brother, come between her and her duty. She collects herself as best she can, and looks down with pity at Mary, who looks over at Alex and Jonathan, absorbed in whispers on the bed.

“I don’t know what would have become of us without John,” she says, almost wistfully, on the verge of choking up. Her words are quiet, as usual, and the sounds of Alex’s wheezing overcomes her small voice. “Alex has been out of work for weeks. We would be completely destitute if it wasn’t for him paying our bills.”

A saddening look comes into the girl’s eyes at this, clouding them, and as she looks over at her Alex, her head tilts to one side and a sort of film comes over her presence, almost as though she’s in a dream, or casting a veil of naivete over herself. Claire has seen this before, seen it in the nurses who met the ruin of their wits on the battlefield, and fell into the deadly habit of using dissociation as a mechanism for survival. The woman looks with grief upon that lost expression; what, in men, was called the thousand-yard stare, but had no name among female survivors of the battlefield except for, perhaps, “hypersensitivity.”

“When do you think he’ll be able to go back to work again?” said Mary, her voice light and far away.

Half of Claire wants to let Mary—still only a child, really—continue to float in this current ignorance. But the other half—the stronger half—knows that to do so would make it far more painful for Mary to have to come crashing down to earth, when the final moment does arrive for Alex. And, in an even worse case, she might never manage to shake herself out of that numb dreamland, at all—a tragedy which she’d borne witness to many times.

So Claire decides to do what she considers the right thing, if painful, and holds Mary’s elbows, recentering her in reality and bringing the girl’s attention to her face. “Mary,” she says firmly, “I think you need to start making preparations with your family. So you have somewhere to go when Alex—”

“When Alex what?” exclaims the girl, suddenly shaken out of the previous blindness to reality. She tries to twist away from Claire, but—seeing that her words have had the intended effect—the woman keeps hold of her, and she puts on the tone and face that she knows the situation requires.

Mary feels her eyes welling with tears as she realizes what Claire is saying, and the truth it holds. “He won’t be going back to work,” says Claire, slowly. “He can’t be cured. I’m sorry.”

Mary knows that the whole situation is holding on by a thread, as it is, and has been for some time. But still she manages to summon up some sort of faith—naive though it may be—her body instinctively trembling at the implications of the woman’s words. “But he must be cured,” she hears herself say, her hands going instinctively to her middle.

Claire, sensing the movement, looks down.

For a moment, the woman’s head spins, and then settles. “God… Mary… Are you pregnant?”

The girl nods her head in the affirmative direction, her lower lip trembling as she looks down at her still-flat front.

“Does Alex know?”

“Yes. And John.”

From the bed across the room, Alex calls softly, hoarsely, for Mary, but she doesn’t hear him. Jonathan quickly carries himself over to the woman and the girl, serving as an emissary for his sickly brother. He looks intentionally down at Mary, saying, “Alex is asking for you,” and effectively sending her hurriedly away, eyes brimming with tears, to sit at her lover’s side.

Claire looks Jonathan directly in the face while she thinks through what she’s just discovered. The child, then, will not have to be fathered by Jonathan, himself. Frank’s ancestor will have been sired by Alex, and would have been born into a loving relationship, had this sickness not taken hold. Equal parts relief and grief seep into her blood, and it takes all she has to resist tears, or shouting, or some other external form of expression. Instead, she looks at Jonathan for another long moment, in her expression summoned up all the hate and horror she wishes on him, and then promptly steps around him, and through the door, fleeing down the corridor to the stairs.

The elder Randall brother, stiff and desperate n his fine clothes, stands feeling much like a heavy island in the middle of the room for a long moment longer, looking between the wall and the floor, and his brother and his lover on the bed, before turning on his heel and running after that profoundly foul (but, unfortunately, necessary) woman.

Mary, startled by this turn of events, looks meaningfully at an equally startled Alex, and leaves his side briefly, going to the window and looking out at the street below. A moment later, Claire comes out of the doorway, Alex’s brother close behind, and quickly (almost violently) restraining her by the arm.

As Mary watches the tense conversation taking place in the street, Alex looks over at her from the bed, blinking back the light from the window. Her little body is framed perfectly by the light, and to him she looks like an angel—his own beautiful, small, sweet angel. He would be content to die right here and now, and his eyelids flicker down momentarily over his eyes.

But then his cough comes back, as though reminding him of something.

And all at once, as his love turns to him again, he knows that there is something he must do. The idea takes solid root in his mind, and from that moment onward, it becomes entirely impossible to cancel or expel...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for continuing to read! I would love to know what your thoughts are, so far!
> 
> ***I can’t believe that I started this less than 24 hours ago, and already so many people are reading! You all make me so happy, and excited to keep writing! THANK YOU, for your support!
> 
> Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn  
> Tuesday 29 December 2020


	4. 4. Proposal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is looking for some relaxing but relevant music to listen to while reading this, I would highly recommend Loreena McKennitt. She does some traditional folk songs that are absolutely gorgeous (her voice is nothing short of angelic), and I frequently make use of her songs while writing, so it’s already woven into the feeling of the story.
> 
> I genuinely hope that I’m not boring you with these few chapters of reiterating the events that unfold onscreen in canon. I’m actually having quite a fun time doing it, and I hope you are, too. Regardless, this will be the last full chapter that depends upon the original episodes. Chapter five will owe itself, in part, to canon, and then will branch off into something we didn’t see in the show. So if you’re enjoying this, then revel in it while you can, and if you’re not, then the end is near.
> 
> :)

Claire returns the next morning, to Mary’s absolute and ineffable relief. After running out onto the street after her the day before, Jonathan had returned inside and assured a worried Mary that the woman would come back. But she hadn’t quite been able to believe it until she’d seen the woman coming through the door before her eyes.

The coughing is far worse, today—the worst it’s ever been. Jonathan had stayed the whole night through with them, helping Mary, who couldn’t help but stay awake as Alex suffered constant and very painful coughing—so bad that he hadn’t been able to get a single word in edgewise for hours over the persistent rattling of his lungs. Claire had arrived at around eight, and in her company, she had brought a very intimidating Scot by the name of Murtagh to play the role of bodyguard, who Mary has decided to trust, but of whom she is still wary. All morning, he has stood without saying a word, stalwart and grim, near the door, keeping an unwavering and suspicious eye on Jonathan, in particular.

And still, now, he stares at the older of the brothers with an intimidating intensity, even as John sits behind Alex, helping to prop him up by holding his burning forehead, and trying to no avail to ease his breathing.

Claire is busily preparing some sort of mixture of herbs and stuffing them inside the chamber of a long wooden pipe, Mary looking anxiously over her shoulder, now back to Alex, now over Claire’s shoulder again.

“What are you doing?” she manages to ask meekly, feeling more than a little useless, but knowing that whatever Claire is up to, it’s a job for only one pair of hands.

Sensing the girl’s feelings, the woman quickly scrambles to think of a simple task that she could give Mary, and her eyes fall successfully upon one, in the form of matches sitting on the nearby nightstand. “Light a taper,” says Claire to the girl with a nod in their direction. Mary hurries to do as she’s been told, just as Claire prepares a cone of stiff paper.

Alex is coughing so badly, now, that it seems to everyone in the room that he’s on the verge of vomiting up a lung. Even Murtagh is inclined to avert his gaze from the ailing man, bent over weakly in the bed, and Jonathan, too, is filled with a bitter and rancid anxiety which is evident upon his face, growing looser and more desperate with every moment, his sweat-drenched brother trembling in his arms.

Claire, however, has managed to keep her wits firmly about her, and Mary is quick to attend the woman, lighting the pipe when it is presented to her. Claire closes her thin lips around the pipe, and puffs it a number of times to get it started, the aroma of the herbs filling the room. 

“He can’t smoke that,” Jonathan objects, feeling very much robbed of his rank in this compromising position, his eyes hard and unmovable, but his face falling dangerously close to trembling.

“It will help open his airways,” Claire argues.

But the elder Randall in the room stiffens and grows more defensive, his hazel eyes suddenly seeming black as he says, through his teeth, “He can barely breathe.”

“This will help him breathe!” Claire protests, more loudly, this time, her own voice growing hoarse with exhaustion. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing— Mary, I need you to hold this—”

But Jonathan shakes his head yet again, making as if to carry Alex away of his own accord.

It is Mary’s word which, at last, compels him to take his chances with the ridiculous woman’s convoluted methods. “Please,” is all she has to say, the sound almost mouselike. He looks up at her swiftly, his eyes stern, but something in them softens when he looks upon her. Something about the need in her eyes, and the unhealthy warmth of his younger brother's skin against his hands, makes it impossible for him to continue his refusal.

Claire, seeing that he’s been convinced without need of verbal confirmation, hands Mary the paper cone, and gets to work. Briefly, she is reminded of how, sometimes, her plans in the field when at war would be stood in the way of by some man, and she would have to curse and lower herself to their level to manage to get her point across. Once, she had almost lost a patient because another soldier had argued against her word for a few moments too long—but he, too, she’d managed to save. And though she knows that it’s doubtful the dreadful turn Alex’s health has taken will be reversed, some small competitive part of her is proud to have prevailed over Jonathan Randall’s argumentative nature.

“Hold this up to his face,” she instructs an obliging Mary, handing her the paper cone. “Cover both his nose and mouth.”

Claire promptly draws some of the healing agent from the pipe into her mouth, and exhales into one end of the cone. Promptly, it clouds out the other end traveling to Alex’s face. “Breathe it in—breathe it in…” she instructs him patiently, looking into the ailing man’s weary, barely-open eyes. “Breathe deeply… that’s it. One more time.”

Mary feels her arms trembling as she continues to hold up the paper cone, the sight of Alex’s face making her feel as though this may be the end, as though he may suddenly slump over lifelessly at any second. But, wondrously, once Claire has puffed more of the herbal remedy into the cone, all of them leading Alex through the breaths in equal part, his gasps start to steady, and his coughs eventually subside.

Claire draws away at last, saying “That’s it,” and Alex gives a strained but grateful smile.

“Thank God. Thank God,” Mary whispers over and over, through trembling lips, her breathing dangerously shallow, but slowly becoming more substantial.

Claire stands and moves again towards the fireplace, and Alex’s face again scrunches into an expression of great pain, his fist going instinctively to his chest, at the point of contention where his lungs are starting to fail on him. Mary stands by the bed with folded hands, looking down intently and with great worry at him. “It’s alright,” Jonathan says to her, noticing her look in his peripheral vision, but resisting the urge to look at her. In response to a meaningful gesture of his hand, she sits down on the bed, and the man allows her to situate her skirts before handing his brother off to her, taking care that she’s successfully supporting the weight of his head and neck. 

“You’re okay,” Mary says gently, easing his weight onto her shoulder. “There you go…”

For a brief moment, Jonathan Randall looks down at them both, and then stands up abruptly from the bed. Murtagh gives the Redcoat a hard glare as he passes… and yet something in the rough Scotsman is quite confused at the notorious sadist’s confusingly warm nature towards his family, and a stitch of confliction appears in his forehead. 

Jonathan goes to stand in the open space at the foot of the bed, and calls dejectedly to Claire, “Madam Fraser,” after a moment of private silence. Claire stands from the fireplace, and approaches him distrustfully, examining the sharpness of his eyes, which resemble his brothers in all but their character.

“He’s in pain,” says the man quietly, clenching his jaw, almost in hatred towards the woman.

“Yes, I know,” Claire says lowly, with a glance sideways towards Mary and the younger Randall brother, holding back the words that she really wants to say (are you blaming me, you sick, self-centered bastard?) by fiercely and dutifully biting the inside of her cheek.

As if summoned by someone which she fears, Mary comes over to stand near the two adults, her feet silent on the floorboards, hands folded in front of her. She looks like a shy little dove, and her head is bent down at an angle so that Jonathan can’t help but notice the exposed skin of her neck… 

“Perhaps a bit more arsenic,” she peeps, with a catch in her throat.

“No,” says Claire, glancing at the Captain, before turning her full attention on Mary. “No more arsenic. It won’t do any good.” Her words are slowly paced, and feel heavy and useless on her tongue. “Laudanum, if he needs to sleep.”

She looks up to her rival, who removes his gaze from Mary’s neck, and looks back at her with, for once, something almost like defeated resignation and… could it be… a desperate _trust _in his eyes.__

__And in this state, Claire has neither the strength nor—surprisingly—the desire to pounce on him. Her eyes lose their narrowness, and her shoulders lower as she admits, as though at confession: “There isn’t anything more I can do. I’m… sorry.”_ _

__Mary steps backward from the woman, her whole face flinching at the words. She knows that she’s just heard, with her own ears, the final death sentence. Or, at least, the equivalent in their situation. Her distress silently perpetuated, she turns and hurries back to Alex’s bedside just before John seizes Claire’s arm, bringing his sharp face dangerously close to her._ _

__“You’re _sorry _? We had an _agreement _.” His voice is dark and thick with a barely-contained ire, his tone gravely and threatening. Despite himself, Jonathan Randall finds himself having trouble breathing. “You said you would help him.”_____ _

______“I am helping…” says Claire defeatedly, Black Jack’s fingers like steel against her skin, “... to ease his pain. But I… _can’t _cure him.”___ _ _ _ _ _

________For a moment, she looks into his eyes directly, and he realizes with a bolt of terror that sets his bones alight, that in saying this, the woman has sacrificed her pride, and that she is telling him the undiluted and very painful truth. Murtagh, however, is blind to this moment of strained and reluctant commonality, and quickly steps in, gripping Jonathan’s arm and pushing him away from Claire with a gruff look in his brows. “If ye need to vent yer frustration, then I’ll happily oblige ye,” he says gruffly._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Provoked, John steps forward, but is quickly halted._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Stop it, both of you—” Claire chastises, her voice tremulous for the first time in a long while._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________But it’s the ailing younger brother on the bed who puts an end to the argument by calling out hoarsely, his voice barely a diminished echo of what it had once been: “Johnny…” And the addressed has no choice but to quickly take his leave of the other two, and hurry to his brother’s side._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________He sits down on the edge of the mattress, a place which has become familiar to him in the past days, and takes Alexander’s clammy, trembling hand in his steady, weather-darkened one. Jonathan can tell, from the incredibly deep and almost drum-like sound of the younger man’s breath, the earnest trembling of his lips, and the dark attentiveness of his eyes, that his brother has something of great import to say._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Alex,” he says, voice deep and heavily saturated with a black anxiety which manages to be considerate towards Alex and Mary, and menacing to Claire and Murtagh at the same time. “What is it?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“I must..” manages Alex, who has had to learn new ways of controlling and rationing his breath, in order to keep from coughing every time he tries to speak. “I must ask you to… do something for… me—” he glances meaningfully at Mary “...for us.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Anything,” promises Jonathan._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Alex nods his head with difficulty, his breath becoming nervous, and barely controllable, but steadier than before, at least. “And know… that I do not ask this… lightly. But for the sake… of your love for me—”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Here, his body is overtaking by hacking coughs that make him strain away from the mattress. Mary catches his head against her chest and attempts to hush him._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________His older brother doesn't wait for the coughing to subside. They all know, by now, that they are past the point at which waiting around for that to happen is a risk worth taking. Significant things need to be said, and time is short._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Alex,” guarantees Jonathan, seeking out his brother’s eyes in the miasma of his hurried breath, his jaw set with the unyielding and thoroughly believable determination which had led him to military success as a younger man. “I won’t let Mary or the child want for anything. You know that.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Thank you…” manages Alex. But it’s evident that there’s something more, and he looks between the two people he has loved most in the world, the same ever-present awareness of the preciousness of time growing heavy on his chest, and making it more challenging than ever for him to breathe properly._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“I’ve sent… for… the minister.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Jonathan, momentarily perplexed but not showing it, looks between his brother and Mary. “The minister,” he repeats._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Mary’s own face falls in reaction to the words and their implication, and her lips start to curl into the position at which tears are most likely. Alex notices their faces, and quickly quells their suspicions. “Oh—the last rights… not just yet… For your…”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________He suppresses a cough. For a moment, he is disappointed that his ill body won’t allow him to say anything slowly, and it seems so vulgar to say things of such great importance with such quickness. But it is the only way, so he has to spit it out, as gently as possible: “For your wedding.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________His face is host to the most extreme earnestness anyone in the room has ever beheld, and his eyes are bright and deep and pleading._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________The elder brother's jaw tenses as the words resonate inside his mind. “My wedding?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“You… and Mary, dear… brother,” Alex gasps, sensing the danger that lays ahead, unless he makes himself as convincing as possible. This is the most necessary thing he’s ever said in his life. “I need you to look after her, Johnny.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Jonathan Randall turns his neck in his suddenly-stiff collar to look at the child on the other side of his brother, her wide and devastating eyes already overflowing with tears, as she looks back at him. His face hardens, but something betrays his inner turmoil without his warrant. Something in his face also manages to open, his eyes widening with the blackest breed of ruin._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Alex desperately calls his brother’s attention back to him: “We want… our child… to have the… Randall name.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________By now, Claire and Murtagh’s attention has been gained, and they stand at the foot of the bed, listening and watching as the event unfolds. A specific sort of terror and guilt enters Claire’s chest as she observes silently, her breath a tight knot in her throat. She had imagined that the necessary marriage between Mary Hawkins and Jonathan Wolverton Randall would be the result of some sort of forced plot on the part of the Captain, not an astronomical favor—practically a dying wish—asked by Alexander directly to his older brother._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“Alex,” says Jonathan in denial. He’s focusing hard on forming his words as cautiously as possible, but his angst and aversion to the idea remains palpable in his voice. “You can do that by marrying her yourself.” Each word is administered as though he is reiterating a quiet reprimand to a child. “Of course I will see that she is taken care of, but—”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________“As… her… husband—” Alex interjects desperately. He gasps with every other word, now, his hand clutching on weakly but with an undeniable and unshakeable firmness to his brother’s sleeve. “You can… give Mary, and… our child… some kind of… position… in the world. So much… more than I could.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Claire watches in dismay as the older Randall visibly withdraws, blinking. Mary looks to him with a pitiful need in her eyes. She doesn't know what she wants. She doesn't even know what this is. But if there is one thing in the world she is sure of, it’s that she wants Alex to be at peace, above all else._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________With what little strength he can spare, Alex draws the girl’s hand closer. “I commend…” he continues, looking with directness into his brother’s eyes, “the well-being of…. Those most.... Precious to me…” (now, drawing John’s hand in closer, and placing it onto the soft skin of Mary’s) “...to the one… I have loved… the longest.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________The words find purchase in Black Jack’s chest with more force than a bullet. Though Jonathan is never, _ever _touched by words like _precious _and _love _, something in his brother’s tone, and the despairing wideness of his focusing and unfocusing eyes, makes a part of him deep inside twist and grow distinctly painful._______ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________From the foot of the bed, Claire catches herself seeing something… human… inside of the man. And she thinks, for the smallest fraction of a moment, that he may not be as wicked as she’d previously thought; at least not as unfeeling. But just as quickly, her guarded sensibilities regain their footing, and again she makes herself as stern towards him as can—her own unbreakable method of survival._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________Alex looks at the older Randall, and the older Randall looks back. His mouth moves as though chewing on something, as though his teeth have been stuck in some stiff and extremely unpleasant substance._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________After a moment of deliberation, he wrenches his hand away from Mary’s and, in effect, from his brother’s._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________The younger brother’s eyes widen with horror as Jonathan’s face stiffens, and he shakes his head ‘no,’ almost imperceptibly, closing his eyes—more in denial of the situation itself than of the proposition. But Alex sharpens his gaze, and continues to stare at his brother until he slowly opens his eyes, again._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________For a brief period of time, it is only the two of them in the room. The two of them and the frequently snapping fireplace._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________“You think I am unaware,” says Alex, suddenly regaining a miraculous power over his words and breath. This seemingly God-granted gift only causes the raw need of his heart to be even more potent in the tone of his voice, each word remaining a struggle against the soreness and rawness of his throat, and the fatigue of his lungs. “Of the density of that… dark wall you have built to protect your… better self… from the world?” Jonathan lets his eyes wander to the wall, his mouth moving, jaw tensing, testing, still gnawing on some invisible but very-present problem. “But I have borne witness to your tenderness… been the beneficiary of your generous soul.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________For the length of heartbeat, Alex’s breath skips, and he thinks he’s about to start coughing again. But with a calm control, he allows air to ease back into his lungs—not too fast, not too slow—and recovers his footing._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________“That _inner man _... is the one to whom I entrust my love—” he gently squeezes Mary’s hand, which makes her bite the inside of her cheek, “...and my… _child _.”_____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________The final word hangs in the air like a stopped pendulum. Jack Randall knows from many years in the military that once a man is resigned to his own death, it is impossible to save him. Up until the moment, the prospect of Alex’s soul actually departing from his body had still seemed, somehow, unrealistic. But now, all at once, Jonathan Randall can be nothing but sure that his brother is going to die, and very soon._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________He looks hard at his sibling, knowing he is about to break his heart. But he has already made his decision, and it is impossible to reverse. Now, he has become conscious of Mary in an entirely different way. Not as a person distinguishable by her body, but as some sort of spirit, kindred in the gentlest and most inseparable way to his brother’s. He senses her presence on the bed as some sort of light—a light that is an extension of Alex, himself. And more than anything, he is very aware of the smoky darkness inside of his own soul that would squelch out that clear light so quickly, with one wrong move. He refuses to destroy his brother that way, even after his death._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________So, gritting his teeth, Jonathan Wolverton Randall says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” and stands, leaving the room._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________“Captain Randall!” Claire calls after him, shattering the quiet that had taken over in the wake of his departure. Alex, his eyes bearing witness to the worst-case scenario, begins violently coughing yet again, his head instinctively going to Mary’s side, as he body crouches over, the position giving fuel to the uncontrollable hacking. To everyone left in the room, even the determined-to-remain-insensitive Murtagh, it’s as though the last of Alex’s hope, the last of his very soul, is about to be expelled from his rapidly draining body._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________“Claire, please!” Mary calls weakly, seeing that the woman had been readying herself to leave the room in pursuit of John. And Clarie, convinced, orders Murtagh to follow the older Randall, before crossing to the bed and again, holding the pipe up to the cone, in an effort to ease the chaos of his coughing, Mary looking on in tears._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________After a few minutes, once Alex’s breathing is mildly under control again, Claire departs and Mary is at last left along with him. He looks up at her from the bed, something wide and almost apologetic in his eyes. His soul is nothing short of scared of what will become of his poor love—and their unborn child—once he is gone, and it seems that with the sudden flight of his brother, all hope has been lost._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________Mary, crumpling as she stands, has no choice but to lay down on the bed beside him. For a moment, in a futile attempt to remain strong, she silences herself—though her chest is still wracked by silent, hiccuping sobs—and nestles his head into the crook between her shoulder and her neck, as he had once done for her in her hour of need._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________But, inevitably, her strength wavers. And all it takes is Alex uttering, to break the strained quietness between them, a desperate and almost guilty “Mary…” for the girl to suddenly lose control of herself completely. She bends over and starts, again, to cry—to sob—into Alex’s chest, and the man can do naught but wrap his weak and trembling arm around her small waist, in an attempt at comforting her._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________“Johnny… is... a good man… Mary,” he forces out, at length. “He won’t… let any harm… come to you, or…” he presses his free hand weakly against her abdomen, and she only sobs harder, gasping for breath between wet wails that she’s incapable of bottling up any longer._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________Mary puts her arms around his neck, and for the first time in a matter of years, she finds herself wishing for her mother—as impersonal and disdainful as the woman has been towards her. At long last, she manages weakly, between hysterical gasps, to speak—all the while wishing that she could get herself under control for Alex’s sake, but knowing such things to be wishful thinking. “I don’t want you to leave,” she whispers._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________Alex feels his mouth tremble at her words. “I know, Mary. I don’t… want to… leave… either…”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________And at that moment, the coughing starts up again, and Mary forces herself to disentangle herself from him, standing up and trying to help him breathe. Calling upon her visual memory, she fixes the pipe and paper cone as Claire had done, and holds the cone to his mouth and nose. Exhaling the herbal remedy into it, she prays that she might be able to infuse some sort of miraculous strength into his body with her breath._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________But they both know, even as he inhales and regains some semblance of control of the air entering and exiting his fatigued lungs, that it won’t help. Nothing will help, in the long run._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won’t be re-writing the scene in this story, but after this event at the boarding house, Claire seeks out Jonathan at a nearby pub. She tries to convince him to marry Mary, citing the day of his death (imminent, at the battle of Culloden) as a reason why he shouldn’t be so averse to the prospect, especially as it’s Alex’s dying wish. Claire claims that if he truly loves his brother, then he will be able to control his sadism with Mary. But Randall fires back, and recounts to Claire the extreme gratification he got out of torturing, humiliating and repeatedly raping Jamie in Wentworth Prison. 
> 
> What really makes his point sink in, though, are the words: “Do you really want Mary in my bed?”
> 
> He really does seem strained over this—he has a loyalty to his brother, but also recognizes his tendencies, and while he may not be guilty of them, he is hyper-aware of them, and maybe even a little frightened of them, when it comes to someone who his beloved brother cares for so deeply.
> 
> I truly believe that this (“Do you really want Mary in my bed?”) is the most chilling and terrifying thing he says in all the time he’s onscreen. That’s not to say that there aren’t other deeply disturbing sentences that come out of his mouth, because there most definitely are… but this one serves as the manifestation of his entire character, in my opinion. Maybe because Mary is so very dear and innocent, and he will be her certain destruction. Regardless, less is more, and at least for me, all my imagination needed were those eight words, to start going down a hundred different perverted and disturbing rabbit holes. And I’d wager that that’s what happened to Claire in that tavern, too.
> 
> P.S. This high of a word count in such a small time-frame is unheard of for me. I swear, smoke is furling off of my keyboard, right now. The muse is being *very* gracious.
> 
> As always, I would love to know your thoughts! I absolutely thrive on feedback!
> 
> Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn  
> Wednesday 30 December 2020


	5. 5. Union

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter will start out with some more canon-paraphrasing, but will then end off with a transition of my own devising. Next chapter, we will get more into the Alternate Universe part of this whole ordeal. Though I give Jonathan some more humane moments in this chapter, please know that I’m not attempting to redeem him, or excuse his violent and twisted actions—only trying to make him as multidimensional as possible, and to capture his mercurial and multi-faceted character.
> 
> In terms of music, I would most closely connect this chapter with Loreena McKennitt’s songs “The English Layde and the Knight” and “Annachie Gordon.”
> 
> What follows is VERY emotionally loaded. If you’re as sensitive as I am, you may need tissues...

By late afternoon, Alex’s coughing had begun to keep him from eating or drinking anything whatsoever without nearly choking and scaring Mary half to death in the process. Soon after, he has started to deny food and drink outright, a development that makes Claire (who had returned soon after leaving in pursuit of Jonathan, and had been encouraging Alex to take some bread, at least, or some water) draw away from him palely, and makes the inability to consume anything extend to Mary, as well. Murtagh stands by darkly through it all, not saying a word.

Jonathan comes back in the evening, followed ten minutes later by a black-robed minister who, quickly grasping the situation, begins the ceremony at once, John and Mary facing each other at the foot of the bed as he stands between them and Claire and Murtagh keep out of the way, to the side—all of them directly in Alex’s line of sight, from where he lies sunken and shivering in the bed.

Time has started to compress and expand in a way that none of them can fully comprehend, and to Mary, an hour seems to be contained within each breath. The girl is so shocked by the vivid reality of it all—but also the lightheadedness that the air gives her—that she can’t quite tell what the minister is saying at any given moment, and only hears and absorbs his words on a subconscious level.

At the start of the process, she had managed to keep herself together as one whole individual, for Alex’s sake. But it doesn’t take long for her to dissolve into separate parts, each straining in contrasting directions, taking their own approach to escaping the situation. Yet, each of these parts remains trapped within her small shaking body, which remains stuck to the spot in the room. And the resulting feeling of utter helplessness makes tears inescapable.

For the first time, John doesn't seem quite like the wonderful and openhearted benefactor she’d thought he was. Now, his great height (which had seemed protective and indicative of status and guaranteed safety) only intimidates her, and his protruding jawbones and sharp eyes seem threatening, where before they had added to the aforementioned illusion of the character she’d imagined him to possess. Now, she realizes that she hardly knows the man—they had met only a handful of times, and only twice had they been alone in each other’s company (and, even then, Alex had been in the room, only sleeping). The prospects of fulfilling the duties of wife with Jonathan Randall as her husband makes Mary feel weak, and as though heer head is all at once far too heavy for the rest of her body to support.

Her vision tunnels and she has to exert an extraordinary amount of effort to remain standing, focusing her vision on a specific spot on the wall as Jonathan looks between the minister and Alexander for a long time before finally saying, “I will.”

The minister reiterates the list of duties that marriage requires of each party for Mary’s sake—words which she barely hears, but which still strike the core of her with each syllable, like cold ice mallets. Once the priest has finished, all eyes are on her, and Jonathan looks at her with a particular firmness, hoping foolishly that the girl might do the dirty deed for him, and refuse Alex’s request. She looks at the younger brother, face steeped in guilt and trembling with tears, and it’s only because of his encouraging nod, and the whispered words of permission, “It’s alright,” that she confirms her own vows, in the end, with a meek and choked “I will.”

Then the minister, deeply affected by the girl’s trepidation in her answer but remaining the professionality required of him before the Law and the Lord, turns to ask the two witnesses to do all in their power to uphold the marriage. 

“We will,” Claire says, closing her eyes.

The minister looks to Murtagh expectantly, and for a moment the Scotsman feels as though he’s kept from using his voice for so long that it may not work—and if it were to work, then it would be morally incorrect for him to agree to the dark union set before him. Alas, his voice does prove functional, and he does end up agreeing, against all better judgment, saying “Aye, I will— Get on with it.”

This prompts the black-robed man to continue, rattling on about something to do with “God,” who seems to be, from Jonathan’s perspective, entirely absent from the room. Until the conclusion of the ceremony, John continues to stare hard at Mary, who continues to cry, looking at the lumps of Alex’s feet under the blankets at the foot of the bed. Overcome by a tremendous sense of loss that makes her dizzy and threatens to make her faint, she steadies herself against the bedpost.

The minister is gracious enough to omit the traditional request for a kiss, and leaves just minutes after signing the marriage certificate and entrusting it to Jonathan, who takes it and folds it curtly into his pocket, once the man has removed himself from the room.

The remainder of the evening and its transition into dusk seems to move much more quickly than that afternoon had done. Alex protests to Mary lying next to him, but she does so anyway, and once her warm little body has been situated next to his in the bed, it is impossible for him to refuse. Claire keeps her hands busy with herbs and rubs to continue “easing Alex’s pain,” whilst Jonathan takes to looking impersonally at his brother and his new wife on the bed—the child’s skirts cast over the lumps of Alex’s legs, where they lay limply under the covers.

Alexander, again and again, finds himself casting his brother long looks of gratitude, which Jonathan returns with an expression of twistedly mingled support and resignation. But behind everything, behind even the less pleasant outward manifestations of his anxiety and restlessness (pacing for a full hour without pause, then sitting in a chair against the wall and looking incessantly out the window whilst gnawing on his knuckles) lurks a complete and pervasive guilt, and the pain and madness that comes with the gradual decay of self-preservation.

From time to time, he will catch Claire Fraser’s eyes, when she happens to look up from the fireplace, wary of his presence. And in those silent moments of eye contact, he hopes that the woman’s prophecy—the one which had haunted him with the date of his supposed death from that fateful night at Wentworth Prison—will come true at Culloden. He couldn’t bear for his brother’s eyes to be looking down upon him, were he to succumb to his desires with Mary; couldn’t bear to betray Alex’s naive faith.

But even as he convinces himself of the necessity of his death, the shadows of Damnation begin to creep in at the corners of the room, and to whisper at him, hissing from the fireplace… and as he becomes surer of Alex’s imminent departure from this world and into heaven, he becomes less sure of his own intentions, and less eager to die—for that door would most certainly lead to a different and more downward destination, for his soul, than it would for his brother’s, which he is certain is bound upward.

The Scotsman takes his leave at some point during the course of those later hours.

Ironically, Alex’s breathing becomes more and more steady as the end grows nearer, and his coughing ceases completely.

The minister is brought into the room a second time, performs the last rites, then leaves again.

Around dusk, Alex tells Mary that he wants to look at her, and his neck is so weak that it’s impossible to look at her while she’s laying beside him, as she is. So, she agrees to sit up, sniffling, her eyes red as her head becomes accustomed to the new position and she gradually wards odd the dizziness. She takes his hand in both of her, and he looks upon her with a weak smile, which he eventually turns on Jonathan, who stands from his isolated chair and makes his way over to the bed, standing up on the side opposite Mary, looking down at his brother and clenching and unclenching his fists.

Claire feels as though it’s inappropriate—if not downright wrong—for her to be here, but also knows that she must be present for Mary’s sake. From where she stands (to the side, near the fireplace), Alex looks both like a very little boy and a very old man, at the same time.

These are the positions in which they remain for the last few minutes, as still and quiet as pawns on a chessboard, waiting for the fateful move to be played.

There is a specific, detectable moment when Alex’s eyes lose their life. Each of them had been watching too closely to possibly miss it. His hazel gaze retains his steadiness for a moment, but the very next, his eyes grow a degree colder.

His stare remains trained in the same direction, though, and Mary notices absentmindedly, turning her head from left to right, that while she stays sitting in the same place, keeping her head in the exact same position, looking directly at him, then it seems as though he is looking directly back at her. It’s a morbid trick, but she doesn't have the capacity to think of it as such. Her mind is suddenly like an overturned cup, and it’s as though she has been caught out on a choppy sea, and has lost herself in the task of keeping her small boat from going under.

Alex’s hand has grown slightly heavier in hers, and in a moment of lucid shock, she lets go of it, the sound of his hand making contact with the mattress—a light but extremely significant thump—the full stop at the end of the short sentence that had been his life.

Mary—giving up her previous, deluded endeavor to make it seem as though Alex was still looking at her—turns her head towards John. Wanting, perhaps, comfort. Or expecting him to finally give up his Captain’s facade and break down into tears—as, for once, she feels incapable of doing. Part of her wants to be able to embrace him, to have something to hold onto that isn’t dead.

Jonathan seems to shiver, and then makes a scratching sound in his throat, as though fighting off a cough, before assembling himself, hardening his face. He returns Mary’s gaze, and easily reads her thoughts, which are practically written—as usual—on her face. As his own features gradually recover from his moment of weakness and solidify into one solid wall again, he hopes to project onto her understanding the fact that he is not much of an improvement from a corpse, himself. 

And as had been his goal, the solid darkness of his eyes relays his point to the girl, and Mary, dejected and somehow more distressed than before, turns back to look at Alex—whose gaze being focused on her is no longer comforting, but unnerving. She leans over him for a moment, as though to lay her head down on his shoulder, but then, sensing the aura of absence that clings coldly to him, she instead gasps and draws back, as though ready to vomit, and begins… finally… to cry.

Claire senses what is about to happen just a fraction of a second before it does, and manages to grab onto Mary and pull her away from the bed just in time.

No sooner has the girl been dragged out of the crossfire, than Jonathan’s fist suddenly pummels down with tremendous force into Alex’s still, pale face, and Claire pulls Mary’s head tight against her chest, keeping the horrific sight from her eyes.

It lasts only a few seconds.

Then, the last of the Randall brothers steps back from the bed, knuckles bloody, and smooths his hair back from his forehead, pressing his tongue viciously against the corner of his mouth and steadying his breathing.

He looks down at his hand. The wind moans a degree louder against the windowpane. And the old familiar Bible verse comes to mind: “What hast thou done? said the Lord. Listen! The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground!”

He almost turns to leave, but then, on second thought, turns towards the fireplace, instead. Claire tightens her grip on Mary, expecting the volatile man to start whaling on the girl, next—or worse, to try and tear her out of her arms and have his way with her. But he does neither, stopping one stride short of them.

Not once taking his steely eyes off Claire’s, he draws the marriage certificate and a pouch of coins from his pocket, and presses them hard into Mary’s small, shaking hands. In that moment, both Claire and Randall are quite frankly hoping that he will perish on the battlefield at Culloden Moor, and not live to see the dawn beyond that day she’d prophesied as the day of his death.

“Arrange the burial,” he says simply, wasting no time in turning on his heel and going out without another look at the body of his brother on the bed.

Mary gasps, as though suffering from a severe fit of asthma, into Claire’s chest, both of them confounded by what they’ve just witnessed. Only the crackling, spitting fire is left to fill the vast quiet of the room, Alex’s body like a black hole, filling the room with a chill that can only be the result of the veil of death.

The woman has to summon all her strength before allowing herself to look over at the man in the bed, and when she finally does, she winces, stinging bile rising in her throat at the sight. At war, she had been forced to look for long periods of time upon far worse injuries. But something is singularly terrible about the bloodiness of Alex’s ruined face—because the damage had been inflicted directly by hands, not by machines from a distance, and by the hands of the victim's own brother, at that.

Mary squirms against the woman’s chest, and though Claire thinks it is wrong to keep the child from looking at her lover, one last time, she also knows that the sight would only devastate and traumatize her, more. Put bluntly, the look of Alex’s face is… horrifying.

“Stay right here,” says Claire, her voice cool and tremulous. “Don’t look.” And she assures that the girl will remain facing the wall, clutching her marriage certificate and the pouch of Jonathan’s money to her chest, before turning and walking slowly to the bed.

Fingers quivering, she takes hold of the blankets, and lifts them up to cover the poor man’s face. Then she presses one hand gently, almost in farewell, against his chest, feeling the fleeting warmth come through the blanket to her palm for a moment, before drawing away and returning to Mary—who soon collapses on the floor, wailing and rocking back and forth as Jonathan’s coins escape from their pouch and roll across the floorboards.

The innkeeper soon comes up into the room to see what the disturbance had been about, and after being explained the situation by Claire, leaves and returns half an hour later with three men who carry Alex’s body away.

It takes a long time for Mary to become quiet and for the storm of her tears and mournful cries to abate. But it’s almost worse once she’s fallen silent—an empty look on her face, and a lifeless slump in her shoulders and neck, her head bowed down limply, and her body given up to frequent shivering spasms that cause her back to stiffen and then fall again into a position of bonelessness.

But just as it seems that the girl will stay on the floor forever, she suddenly moves, stretching her arms out and getting onto all fours. Mary crawls across the room, gasping with each movement of her hands and knees, and clambers up into the bed. The bed—quickly becoming rancid with the odor of old sweat and sickness. Claire looks on in horror as the girl pulls the covers over herself, presses her face into the pillow where Alex’s head had been an hour before (now speckled, in places, with his blood), and promptly falls asleep.

Murtagh returns at just shy of nine o’clock to guard the room for the night, armed and prepared to make use of his sword in the event of Black Jack’s return. The Scotsman stands at the window, looking down like a hawk into the street below, waiting.

Randall doesn’t show his face again, but he does send a messenger around an hour later, a young man cloaked in black who hurries up the stairs and knocks quietly on the door, glancing with considerable unease at the girl laying on the late Alex’s deathbed. "For Mrs. Randall," he says, and Claire nods her head up and down, having to shake off the cold and reptilian feeling she gets from the familiarity of the surname, the surname which had (in another life) belonged to her. The messenger nods his head before placing a folded piece of parchment into Claire’s waiting hand, and hurrying back out again, and away down the muddy street into the thick, windy night.

Claire stands by the light of the fire to open it, Murtagh stepping over to look over her shoulder with his usual silent intensity. The message is just barely legible, written in noticeably inebriated handwriting:

_I have sent for a carriage to meet you at the boarding house a quarter past ten tonight. It will take you to the docks. A ship will be waiting to deliver you to my family estate in Sussex, and the man in the carriage will escort you for the duration of the journey. I have sent a messenger, and my trusted staff will await you at the house. The body should arrive south shortly after you do. Care for my brother’s child. With luck, we will never see each other again. J.W.R._

“I dinna ken why we shouldn’t keep the poor lass here,” Murtagh argues, after reading the message over, himself. “The sick bastard’s bound to meet his end at Culloden two days from now.”

Claire considers his words for a moment, but while the proposal is tempting, she has to shake her head no. “It would be dangerous to defy Randall’s wishes. It could compromise…” she hesitates for a second, out of habit, before remembering that Murtagh had been made aware of her extraordinary situation and knowledge of the future back in France. “Compromise the course of history… the way things play out. It would be best to send her where he wants her, for now. And then, after Culloden, she’ll be free to go anywhere she likes.”

Murtagh looks gruffly in the direction of the girl, sleeping like a stone, and then returns a stern glare to Claire. “An’ if things dinna go as planned?”

“If we keep her in Scotland,” Claire warns, “and the battle is lost by the Jacobites, then she would be forced into hiding, and that would only increase Randall’s wrath when he found her. And he _would_ find her; she’s carrying his brother’s child. No.”

She glances down once more at the parchment, before tossing it into the fireplace, watching the flames lick at the edges of the paper, slowly turning it black, and then entirely to ash.

“It’s best for her to go to Sussex. We’ll handle the consequences, either way—but this way, they will be less severe. For her sake.”

Murtagh is compelled by nature to argue, but there is a look that sometimes comes into Claire’s eyes, as it does now—a look that he knows never to argue with. So he stands down, looking meaningfully at her from under bushy dark brows, before resuming his self-appointed post at the window.

Claire looks to the clock above the mantel—one minute after ten—and crosses the room to wake Mary. Her sleep had been lighter than it had seemed, and Claire has only to brush her fingers against the girl’s arm for her to open her scarlet-rimmed eyes. 

Slowly, the woman passes on the information contained in the first half of the letter, that there will be a carriage, soon, to deliver her to a boat that will take her to Jonathan’s estate in Sussex. The girl evidently hears, but makes no reaction, only turning her face further into the pillow. Her eyes remain open, staring stingingly across the room at the opposite wall, but she may as well be asleep, and Claire knows not to press further. At the moment, easing the girl’s grief would be impossible; and there is other time-sensitive business to attend to.

The woman goes over to the wardrobe and busies herself with packing what few articles of clothing Mary had kept in it into a nearby trunk. After a moment of deliberation, she also folds and stows in the trunk what appears to be one of Alex’s nightshirts, hoping that it might bring comfort rather than distress to the girl later.

Time passes quickly, and it seems that only one minute rather than fourteen has been eaten up before Murtagh announces that the carriage has arrived in the street below.

Closing the latches of the trunk and standing it up against the wall to be taken downstairs, Claire goes to the bed and attempts to help Mary rise. But the girl is as good as paralyzed, and shows no desire to leave the spot where Alex had been for so long.

Sensing the woman’s helplessness, Murtagh takes action and crosses the room, picking the girl up in her arms with one swift, easy motion. Claire expects Mary to protest, and shoots Murtagh a look of warning, but Mary does no such thing, barely reacting at all to being picked up. Her only reaction is to grab the pillow she’d been laying on a moment before, and holding it against her with a death grip, apparently intent on taking it with her.

Claire doesn’t have it in her to try to pry it away from the girl, and Murtagh, too, is resigned and saddened by the sight, staying silent when Claire looks at him mournfully.

Murtagh carries Mary down the narrow creaking stairs of the inn, and Claire follows soon behind, lugging the trunk alongside her. The night is cold and damp, but Mary’s body doesn’t so much as shiver in Murtagh’s arms. Claire puts the trunk down on the back of the carriage with a heave, and looks intently into the faces of the driver and of the man in the back of the carriage—whom Randall had promised would accompany Mary all the way to Sussex—to make sure that Jonathan himself isn’t inside, playing some kind of trick. Only when satisfied does she step aside, making way for Murtagh to set the speechless girl into the carriage.

The woman looks in at the girl, keeping the door open for a short time longer. Though it seems to her that she should be less surprised by all of this—she had known this moment of separation to be imminent for a long time, now—she can’t help but feel a choking sensation, feeling the weight of her actions. Claire knows she has to let Mary go in confidence that Jack Randall will die at Culloden Moor, but another part of herself is pulled in the opposite direction.

“When—” starts Claire, giving voice to her thoughts, in hopes that this method might help them to straighten in her own heart. “ _if_ Jonathan is killed in battle…” she says to an unresponsive Mary, “his property will fall to you, and your family—I’m sure—will take you back in.”

Mary’s head turns slightly from the carriage towards Claire, and though she doesn't look directly at the woman, it’s clear that she is paying attention. Suddenly, the girl isn’t so sure how much she should trust the woman, anymore. She doesn't want Johnny to die.

“If your father, by some chance, doesn't agree to take you, then there will always be a place for you, here, with us…” Claire proposes, looking to Murtagh, who offers a stoic nod in support of her claim. “Though it may not be the life you’re accustomed to… There will always be someone here for you, when you’re in need.”

But even as she looks at the small girl, clutching the pillow tightly against her, Claire feels a horrible spike of terror hit her heart. Truly, this whole plan balances on the edge of a knife, and could easily topple one way or the other. So easily, something could go very wrong. And in that case… Well, Sussex is so terribly far away, and Mary would be so far from anyone knowledgeable about her husband’s tendencies, so far from help…

With effort, Claire silences these thoughts, fearing that if she thinks about the worst case scenario too hard, it might come true, and not at all willing to tempt faith in her precarious position.

Finally, she has to let the girl go, and she leans slightly into the carriage to give her one last embrace. But Mary is stiff and cold, and doesn't seem to register the reality of arms around her, whatsoever, staring at the black velvet wall of the carriage—and through it—with wide, blank eyes. There’s no other word with which to describe her state but _catatonic_.

So, forcing herself to draw backward, the woman steps back and shuts the carriage door.

Claire and Murtagh stand there on the side of the quiet muddy street for a long time, haunted by the final glimpse they’d gotten of Mary Randall: the shadowy, milky shape of her through the dark glass, warped by the night-time.

But they can only remain so long before it becomes necessary to leave; to return to where the others are encamped and awaiting their return. Claire nods at Murtagh’s gruff-voiced reminder, knowing that it’s time, now, to go back to Jamie; to entrust Mary, for the time being, to fate; to leave the day behind her; and to turn her precious focus on the all-important task of the ambush and—if that fails—the battle of Culloden that looms in the near future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would really like to know what you thought of that brief paragraph or two where Jonathan was pondering his own mortality, and pondering where his soul might be bound after death. I had a heck of a time writing that, as short as it was, and I would be grateful to know if that resonated with anyone else, as much as it did for me. 
> 
> In canon, Jonathan and Mary are both standing over Alex in his final moments, not touching him. I thought this was absolutely terrible when I saw it, and I wasn’t able to keep from showing these characters just the smallest bit of kindness before the storm. So that’s the reason why Mary sits down beside him, instead. It was just too cruel to let him leave the world without her touch. Luckily, Claire manages to get her to stand up, and, in effect, takes her out of the crossfire before Jonathan’s violent reaction ensues.
> 
> This chapter concluded the reiteration of scenes directly from the episodes. I’m sorry if Claire felt a little bit underdeveloped here, but I wanted to devote these first few chapters mostly to exploring Jonathan and Mary, and laying important foundations for the chapters coming up. Claire will become much more important and three-dimensional in the future (pun intended).
> 
> Next time: Mary grieves and pines in solitude at the Randall estate. Gosh, I am just SO excited to write these intense scenes coming up!!!
> 
> I BEG you to let me know what your thoughts are! Feedback is a writer’s most important form of sustenance, and as much as I love seeing your kudos and hits, it drives me crazy not to know what you’re thinking! I know that probably makes me sound crazy but, hey, I get to play the “writer” card.
> 
> ;)
> 
> But, really… I would love to connect with you.
> 
> Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn  
> Wednesday 30 December 2020


	6. 6. In the House That Jack Built

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Please excuse any typos or weird sentence structures/grammatical errors. I had a hard time writing this chapter and simply don’t have it in me to edit it with the attention to detail that I usually do. I hoped to update last night, or at least this morning… but, again, this chapter was really difficult to write, for reasons that will become obvious once you read it...
> 
> The title of this chapter alludes to a popular nursery rhyme that talks about the ‘natural order of things’ or the ‘chain of command’ in life. Just to clarify, Jonathan “Jack” Randall is not the builder of the house, but his great-great grandfather Jackson is. I thought it was too fitting to pass up. The rhyme is written in the style that each verse builds on the last, so that the final verse contains all the parts of the song (just like the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas”). So, here is the last verse of the rhyme. It pretty much sums it up:
> 
> _This is the farmer sowing his corn,_   
>  _That kept the cock that crow'd in the morn,_   
>  _That waked the priest all shaven and shorn,_   
>  _That married the man all tatter'd and torn,_   
>  _That kissed the maiden all forlorn,_   
>  _That milk'd the cow with the crumpled horn,_   
>  _That tossed the dog,_   
>  _That worried the cat,_   
>  _That killed the rat,_   
>  _That ate the malt_   
>  _That lay in the house that Jack built. ___
> 
> __Just so you know, Jonathan’s family estate is entirely fictional, and not based on any real land in Sussex. Also, in this chapter the members of the estate staff will refer to Mary by the title “Mistress,” and to the still-absent Jonathan as “Master.” I’m not sure about the accuracy of these titles, and information on the specific time period and location is hard to find, and often convoluted. If anybody happens to be knowledgeable about those sorts of titles, please let me know if I’m doing it right!_ _
> 
> __Warning: descriptions of mourning, and a burial._ _

The Randall estate is the second-largest in the entirety of East Sussex, covering many hundreds of acres just outside the town of Rye. The Manor house itself is giant and magnificent, positioned at the heart of the property with the fields, gardens and servants’ houses to the south; and the orchards, family graveyard, stables, and woods to the north. A long and well-kept private drive leads from the region’s main road up to the house, weaving scenically alongside the gardens and veering away from the servants’ quarters and the mundane fields for a quarter mile before stopping at the glittering stone fountain, just ten paces from the front door.

Mary arrives in the estate’s most favored black carriage with a navy velvet interior on the afternoon of April fourteenth, having been retrieved a quarter hour before from the docks. The most important servants of the house have gathered outside by the door awaiting their new mistress’s arrival, and a number of them are plagued by nervous fidgets—the household had been in a downright state since receiving word of Alexander’s death, and Jonathan’s impromptu marriage, and a cloud of anticipation hangs heavily over them all: _what will this young woman look like? what will her nature be?_

Questions made all the more pressing by the cold that clings to the air outdoors—despite the singing of the birds in the slowly-but-surely blossoming trees, Winter has been insistent on carrying over into the territory of Spring, and it’s close to impossible for many of the staff to hold back shivers in the wet chill.

A footman is ready and waiting by the fountain to offer his assistance, placing a step stool down by the carriage door just as the horse comes to a stop. When the door is opened, the girl, still wearing the ripening clothes she’s been in for more than thirty-six hours, allows one hand to be taken by the footman, but remains tightly clutching a dirty pillow to her side with her other arm, refusing to look at anyone.

The assembled staff steal glances at one another, their eyes all set in varying degrees of wideness, but carrying the same message: _She’s so young… Look at her clothes… Look at her_ face, _poor thing. What on earth has happened to this poor girl?_

 _What_ will _happen to her? ___

__But just as soon, when Mary’s shoe meets the gravel of the drive with a soft crunch, a bustling, buxom woman—the head maid of the house—steps forward towards the girl, to the relief of the rest of the household, who are granted a moment to neutralize their faces and resume their proper postures._ _

__“Mistress,” says the maid, as the footman picks up the stepstool and also retrieves the young lady’s trunk from the back of the carriage, then prompting the driver to steer the horse into the nearby carriage house. Mary is extremely slow to respond, and though her body is stiff and still where she stands on solid ground, her mind is still wobbly and seasick—and from more than just the journey by boat._ _

__A breeze rattles in from off the sea to the south, like a croaking last breath, and it stirs the flowers that sit in pots on either side of the grand door. Many of the servants dare to look up at the young girl, who seems as pitiful as an impoverished and destitute orphan plucked off the street and married to Satan himself against her will._ _

__Knowing the nature of the middle—and now sole remaining—Randall son, many of the servants had been nervous that the young woman would be of wicked temperament, to match her new husband’s. But the reality is almost certainly worse. The girl before them is quieter, meeker and seemingly far less determined than any mouse, and the heavy robe of depression that hangs from her shoulders is impossible to deny or ignore._ _

__Their master had sent no details in his last letter, only informing them that his _pregnant wife_ would be arriving at the estate imminently, and that his brother’s corpse would be arriving soon after. No context had been offered as to the circumstances of the marriage itself, or that of the death—though all of the household had already been aware that the youngest of the Randall brothers had been afflicted with a bad cough for many years. And many of the servants can’t help but speculate and invent far-fetched scenarios in an effort to explain the appearance and manner of their master’s child bride._ _

__Though she is pregnant (that particular word had carried great weight in all of their minds since the arrival of the letter), the girl carries none of the usual glow that comes with that condition. She looks ill in a way so horrible and total that it cannot be described in words, and the thought in everyone’s mind is that it can’t be good for the unborn child. But, of course, no one would dare say such a thing aloud._ _

__The maid notices the intense look of loss, and the whirlpooling blankness in the child’s eyes, and struggles to maintain her jolly and welcoming mood. “You can call me Bertha,” she tells the girl, taking gentle hold of her upper arm—which, again, elicits no response—in a fruitless attempt to connect with her._ _

__“Here—” Bertha continues, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright both with encouragement and the anxious beginnings of deeply empathetic tears, noticing the pillow which the child is so insistently holding onto. “Let me take this for you—”_ _

__But as her hand reaches out to take the pillow, the girl shows her first sign of alertness, and draws back slightly. Still looking down at the ground, but her breath catching in her chest for a moment, making it seem as though she has suddenly moved a great deal, Mary’s lips let slip a single, forced word: “No.”_ _

__Her features and frame, once charmingly bird-like, are now more reminiscent of a ghost. Her voice, once high and melodious, is hoarse and afraid._ _

__Bertha draws back at once, surprised by the small girl’s reaction, and feeling terrible for having assumed anything, so early on; and with the girl, herself, in such a state… The maid is old enough to be Mary’s grandmother, and yet for a moment, she feels as though she shares the poor thing’s small and young—but undeniably wilted—body._ _

__She had always desired children and grandchildren of her own, but the Lord had had other plans. Now, it seems, she will be required to act as guide to the tender new arrival to the household. She can’t imagine what darkness has lurked in Mary’s past, but in that moment she vows to herself that she will seek in all she does to help the girl overcome it—as difficult as such a task may seem, whilst residing under the same roof as a man the likes of Captain Jonathan Randall._ _

__“My apologies, Mistress,” she says gently, withdrawing her hand. Mary risks a glance at the aging woman, sensing something of a trustworthy soul in her, but just as soon looks down again, not yet ready to exit her state of numbness but feeling significantly less alone. “You must be exhausted after your long journey— I’ll show you directly to your rooms… or perhaps some sustenance?”_ _

__Mary shakes her head back and forth once, stiffly, clutching the pillow— _Alex’s pillow_ —tighter to her small frail side. Bertha understands this to mean that _the room_ is the preferred option, and nods to indicate her understanding._ _

__The footman, carrying the trunk, goes ahead of them through the front door and into the house, and Bertha steps aside intentionally, allowing Mary to proceed in front of her. Which, after a moment of staring blankly after the footman into the maw of the waiting house, she does._ _

__The respective members of the household remain standing there in the front of the manor for an awkward interval of time, before finally the butler steps forward and takes his leave of the formal line, the wordless action by a superior granting the others permission to slowly disperse to their respective stations around the grounds or within the house, already whispering quiet speculations amongst themselves in regards to the shocking and unexpected state of their master’s young wife._ _

__Progress through the massive house and up the monstrous, creaking staircase to the third floor proves dreadfully slow. Mary, easily becoming light headed, is forced to stop a number of times, clutching the banister and bowing her head, recovering her breath before continuing, always more slowly than before. Bertha takes up a position at the girl’s side, taking her by the frail arm to assist her up the stairs, while being careful not to interfere with the girl’s attachment to the mysterious but obviously significant pillow._ _

__The footman has already delivered Mary’s trunk to the bedroom and gone back downstairs by the time they finally reach the landing on the third floor. Deeming it safe to leave the girl’s side, Bertha hurries ahead slightly, guiding the way to the room down the corridor._ _

__But Mary, hugging the pillow with both arms, now, comes to a stop, instead, in front of one room whose door is standing just ajar, and looks inside. She can sense a familiar presence, there, and for a moment, she imagines that if she were to walk through the door, she would find Alex standing behind the door, waiting to surprise her. The fantasy is vivid enough to compel her forward, but her feet remain firmly planted outside the door._ _

__“Is this Alex’s room?” she says aloud, her voice much lighter than before, but not bright or cheerful, a sad wistfulness spilling from her throat like the coo of a mourning dove._ _

__“Yes,” answers Bertha, the persistence of the present-tense ‘is’ rather than ‘was’ in Mary’s question not lost on her. She wonders, for the first time, whether the girl and the recently deceased young master had been more deeply connected than Jonathan’s letter had implied._ _

__Without difficulty, she deciphers the meaning of the child’s expression as she looks longingly into the empty room: clearly, she wants to sleep there, instead. And the desire in Mary’s entire frame is so apparent that it’s as though she’d spoken the request aloud._ _

__“I’m afraid,” Bertha interjects, though it pains her, “that wouldn’t bode well with the Captain. A room of your own has been prepared, already… just here…”_ _

__She moves towards a different room on the other side of the hall, one door down and directly across the corridor from the room adjacent to Alex’s—around which Mary can distinctly detect the aura of Jonathan._ _

__The child’s eyes adopt a devastating depth that makes Bertha almost let her do whatever she pleases. But before she can be convinced, the submissive child, too tired to argue, walks silently across the floorboards, past the older woman, and into the room. Her youthful but miserable face wears a look of such pitifulness, and her small body is so deeply stooped, that the maid is compelled to cross herself once Mary’s back is turned._ _

__Mary (on a subconscious level… the level on which she feels and thinks everything, now) is relieved to finally be in a dark room again. The light outside had made her eyes wince and her headache, and the heavy velvet drapes are all drawn over the windows in this room, making it dim but for the fireplace, and giving it a feeling of safety. She feels… swaddled in the darkness._ _

__Bertha feels she should help her get out of her clothes and bathe in the tub full of warm water that had been set out by the closed windows by the other maids, a short time before. But Mary won’t be touched, and so after a minute of uselessness, the maid decides that the best thing to do would just be to leave the poor creature be, for now. Voice nearly breaking, she tells Mary to ring the bell on the mantle if she needs anything, and then leaves, closing the door with a quiet click of the doorknob._ _

__Though the girl has been watched and hovered over constantly over the past hours (first by the man who had escorted her inside the carriage back in Edinburgh and on the boat, then by the driver of the Sussex carriage, then by the seemingly well-to-do maid), she feels little to no change in herself at being finally left completely alone._ _

__There’s a fire in the fireplace which crackles gently, but otherwise, in the house—whose great magnitude she can feel above, below and around her with a great and anxious clarity—there is only a deep and pervasive silence. WIth shuffling feet, gripping the pillow tighter, she moves to the chest sitting at the foot of the bed, atop which has been sat her trunk. Wedging the pillow under her arm, she opens the claps, the loud snapping sound as the trunk's lid springs open making her jump a little. Hugging the pillow closer again, she uses her right arm to take all of her clothes from the trunk, limply letting each article fall to the floor, forming a pile of useless paisley prints, brocades, solid satins and wrinkled undergarments._ _

__Normally, Mary’s clothes would bring a sort of stability to her. In all her wanderings between England and France, it had always been a relief to open her trunk and hold in her hands the familiar pieces of fabric, and to feel safe and secure inside a dress she knows well. But now, each of them is nothing but an empty bag, and as they drop to the floor, she feels none of the guilt at this act that should come with a long-held reverence for clothing. Useless… useless… useless…_ _

__Until, at the very bottom of the trunk, her hand encounters something impossible, something that she does care for, and very deeply—more deeply than she’s cared for any other piece of fabric in her short lifetime._ _

__Alex’s nightshirt._ _

__She hasn’t the slightest inkling how it managed to find its way into the bottom of her trunk, but it doesn't matter. She at last manages to let the pillow go, setting it carefully and gently on the foot of the bed over the open lid of the trunk, and then taking the nightshirt into both hands, pressing it to her face and inhaling deeply. It smells richly and wondrously of Alex._ _

__She doesn't want to so much as touch the bath of water nearby, but knows that she shouldn’t allow such a precious article of clothing to be dirtied by her skin, as grimy as it is, in its current state. And she absolutely _must_ put it on; needs to as much as she needs to breathe._ _

__Though it is painful, she slowly removes all of her clothes, her shoulders grating when she has to reach behind her to undo her corset. But she manages, and after a few minutes of struggling with her underclothes and the disagreeable, travel-stiffened dress, she stands small, frail, and naked by the fireplace. Crossing her arms over her sunken chest, she steps out of the pile of clothes on the floor, and goes to the bathtub._ _

__She washes herself off carefully, using only one of the many soaps that are sitting on a little table next to the tub, and one of the shampoos. When, after what might be a few minutes, but could just as easily have been half an hour, she steps out from the water onto the waiting mat, she leaves behind a number of white suds and snaking strands of her black hair on the surface of the water._ _

__The vastness of the room compared to the small and contained bath makes her shiver. She’s cleaner than she’s been in days, her skin so warm and white that she feels, suddenly, unprotected._ _

__She hurries to dry off with the prepared towel, making sure that every part of her is dry before daring to touch the nightshirt again, her fingertips whispering over the fabric reverently before she pulls it carefully, slowly over her head. Alex had not been too much taller than herself, but she still feels enveloped in the garment. It’s swimming on her, but in the moments when the skirt brushes her side, she feels as though it is Alex’s fingers exploring her skin, Alex’s hands on her shoulders, Alex embracing her loosely._ _

__The bottoms of her feet feeling exposed and sensitive against the floor, she leaves her clothes in their pile, and doesn’t bother to close the lid of the trunk before walking around the side of the bed, and climbing into it. She retrieves Alex’s pillow, and situates it on top of the others, before burrowing under the blankets and resting her weary head against it._ _

__She’s nearly drifted off, feeling Alex’s arms around her, smelling his warm scent in the pillow, when the illusion suddenly sours—and in that heartbeat of weakness, she suddenly hallucinates that a spider (only the size of the tip of her thumb, but altogether terrifying, in the moment) is crawling over the sheets just a few centimeters from her nose._ _

__A gasp catches in her throat, and she stumbles backwards out of the bed, rescuing the pillow just in time. Just as her feet come in contact with the floor, the spider seems to slip underneath the colors, and out of sight, and the stillness of the bed scares her even more than the hallucination had. She stares at the covers and pillows for another minute before crossing to the other end of the room and laying down on the rug before the fire: where she clutches the pillow tightly against her chest, and her mind promptly collapses—as under the influence of a powerful drug—into a total and blissful unconsciousness._ _

* * *

__Throughout the remainder of that afternoon, evening and night, Bertha had made it a habit to climb the stairs to the third floor, and press her ear against the door of the young Mistress’s bedroom. Each time, she would listen for any sign that the child might be awake, and each time, there would be only silence. So, she’d discerned that the child would be sleeping for a long time, possibly into the following morning, and had retired to her own chambers for the remainder of the night._ _

__At dawn, she wakes, dresses herself, lights a candle, and heads upstairs to wake Mary—stopping in the kitchens along the way and pilfering a scone with which to sustain herself._ _

__After knocking two times softly on the door to announce her presence, Bertha enters the bedroom, sets the candle on the mantle over the cold, dark fireplace, and then crosses the room, saying pleasantly, as though to wake an infant: “Good morning, Mistress.” Reaching overhead, she pulls open the drapes, the cool blue, misty light of the Northern side of the grounds cutting into the room. With a sigh, she straightens her skirts and turns towards the bed, to gently wake the girl, if the light hasn’t started the process already._ _

__But Mary is not in the bed, nor is she anywhere in the room. There is only the silence of the black coals in the fireplace, a tousled bunch of blankets on the empty mattress, and a pile of clothes from the empty, wide-open trunk sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed._ _

__With the sensation of a stone dropping into her stomach, the maid looks back out the window, and it is there that she spots the child: wearing only a man’s nightshirt, still clutching that pillow to her abdomen, meandering through the apple orchard in the freezing mid-April morning fog._ _

__“Oh! My _stars_...” she exclaims aloud to herself. Bertha hasn’t the slightest clue as to how the poor thing had managed to make it out of the house without anyone noticing, but that doesn't matter now; her task is to retrieve her and get her back inside and in front of a warm fire as soon as possible._ _

__So, she quickly puts a blanket over her arm, gathers her skirts about her and hurries downstairs, through the wide-open front door and around the side of the house. Saying “oh, oh, oh” to herself, she shuffles across the dewy grass to the orchard, and when she finally catches the disoriented girl by the forearm, she throws the blanket securely around her tiny shoulders, and ushers her back into the house._ _

__Bertha calls the other staff to attention by ringing a bell, which has them all up and about the house within just five minutes. Assigning each of them tasks (telling three of the other maids to go and see to the situation with the pile of discarded clothes in the girl’s room; sending a young man to alert the cook), she then sets about situating Mary before the fireplace in the sitting room. An hour later, breakfast has been prepared at last. But the girl, staring into the flames and still refusing to let go of the pillow for even a moment, won’t eat. Bertha suggests that she might help her to put some different clothes on, promising that she would wash the nightshirt with the utmost care. But Mary won’t agree to that, either, simply shaking her head back and forth, her wide eyes drooping with tears._ _

__After a few minutes of trying to convince the young Mistress to stand up, to move to a different room, to do _anything_ , and to no avail, the old head butler Stephen enters the room._ _

__The two of them are the most important people on the estate when the masters are away, and have worked closely together in the household for decades. So all that is needed for Stephen to summon Bertha to his side is a slight motion of his head, and a twitch of his mouth._ _

__Averting his eyes out of respect for the practically-naked girl sitting before the fire, he says, in a low voice, “Perhaps… we should take those rags away ourselves; get her to wear something better… _actual_ clothes. Didn’t Edward’s wife say, after his passing, that getting oneself into a proper dress is the first step to… well…”_ _

__Bertha understands his meaning—for Mary to start wearing normal clothes and going about the house in a more normal fashion might help her to transition into a more healthy state of mind—but shakes her head, her eyes full of pity for the small, devastated creature by the fire._ _

__“Let the poor child do what her heart tells her, for now,” she whispers back to Stephen. “I don’t see the reason to force her into a fine dress until the master’s return.”_ _

__So, for the rest of that day, and for many days after, Mary is permitted to about in this way: wearing only Alex’s nightshirt and a brown, crochet shawl around her shoulders, her dark hair hanging down in a thick, tangled mess. Not once does she let the pillow out of her sight, carrying it around with her the way a child carries around a prized toy that a younger sibling might steal if it’s not properly protected. She consumes nothing but what Bertha makes her eat and drink (some bread, fruit and water), out of the fear that the girl might topple over and fade from existence if she doesn’t keep her sustained. Indeed, Mary comes close to fainting often, and refrains from speaking, often breaking into silent spells of tears._ _

__But, after two days of sitting quietly, or walking around the grounds (through the orchards and around the perimeter of the woods—with a pair of watchful young maids always walking silently a few paces behind her); and two full nights of deep sleep, Mary ends up coming to her senses again… or, at least, entering into a state of self-awareness. That is: not floating around in a constant daze._ _

__Her wandering path around the house becomes more purposeful, and some of that distant cloudiness leaves her eyes, which strain forward, as though searching for something specific, though the girl doesn't know yet what it is. Bertha, more nervous about the poor child by the day, takes to keeping a close watch on her, herself, rather than sending the other maids out to keep track of Mary on her behalf. She always stays a safe distance behind the girl, not wanting to disturb her, but the young Mistress seems to not mind being followed; seems to barely notice._ _

__Around noon on her third day at the estate, Mary wanders into one of the many rooms she has yet to explore, just off the front parlor. In the early days of the house, the room had served as a ballroom. But in more recent decades, that use had become moot. Still, the grandeur that the room once possessed is still inherent in its bones: the polished parquet flooring, the gilt mirrors hanging at regular intervals on the walls, and the giant windows facing the Southern part of the property, looking out over the fountain, gardens and fields._ _

__But the part of the room most significant to the girl is the giant and beautiful grand piano in the corner of the room, just by the windows, with the keys covered in a very thin sheen of dust and an open folder of music sitting atop it. Slowly, she makes her way across the floor towards it, hugging the pillow against her side, and comes to stop just a few paces short of the tucked-in bench._ _

__Bertha makes her presence known, brushing her foot intentionally against the floor and opening the lightly-groaning door just a bit more so as not to startle the child immediately with the sound of her voice. “Can you play?” she asks sensitively._ _

__“No,” lies Mary, quickly. Her voice has come back to her in stages over the past days, but it still remains lower in her chest than it ever had been before, and often hoarse and sore._ _

__Bertha, not detecting the lie, smiles wistfully. “The young master Alex could play beautifully,” she says tearfully._ _

__Mary nods her head minutely, not smiling. “I know.”_ _

__In her eyes, he had been nothing short of a master, though he never bragged of his talents, and always resisted playing in public. They had played duets back in France, Alex helping her to improve upon the obligatory training she’d received as a child, as part of her training to be a proper and pleasant young lady. Under Alex’s patient guidance, the piano had seemed less of a boring, clunky and impossible machine that resisted her every effort, and more of a cooperative and wonderfully complex instrument through which to express the most interior and private emotions._ _

__Bertha looks on in sadness as the girl sits down on the bench, sets the pillow down beside her, and makes as if to try to play something. But Mary can’t bring herself to do anything more than brush her fingertips across the cold, solid keys._ _

__“It’s an old house,” says the maid after a few long moments, taking a step forward. “It can get lonely.” She decides to take an informal tone with the girl, seeking to close the gap between them. “Your husband’s great grandfather Jackson Randall had it built a hundred years ago. And word’s been passed down that he was quite fond of solitude. The house was built to be large; built to isolate its inhabitants.” By now, she has crossed the ballroom and she stops at Mary’s side, leaning forward with a kind wink. “Only if they stay in their separate rooms, that is.”_ _

__Mary is able to force the ghost of a smile onto her lips._ _

__Later, when Bertha has decided it’s safe to let the girl wander alone for a time and left to oversee the kitchens, Mary finds herself in Jonathan’s study on the first floor. The room is of medium size, larger than the bedrooms but only a third the size of the ballroom, and is positioned in the center of the house, so there are no windows. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line all four walls, and the room is lit solely by a little oil lamp that sits burning on an imposing oak desk._ _

__The papers in the drawers are all meticulously organized, and she isn’t compelled to snoop, but is made interested by two particular books that sit stacked atop each other on the corner of the desk. Upon further investigation, she finds that they are the family Bible—whose front page is inked with the names of each member of the Randall line for many generations back—and a collection of Shakespeare plays._ _

__As her eyes take in the verses, she understands how Alex’s natural way with words might have developed into the soaring, poetic letters that he’d sent her throughout their early courtship in France. Clutching the pillow with one arm, and the heavy book with the other, she leaves the study to seek out Bertha. Down in the kitchens, surrounded by intermittently staring servants, she asks the woman if she might borrow it, and Bertha answers that she doesn’t see any reason why not, before watching the girl turn away—her posture suddenly more hopeful, escaping into her room to pore for hours over the old, thin pages._ _

* * *

__Alex’s body arrives in a black coffin the next morning._ _

__It had all been arranged by the man who takes care of the estate’s financial business, but his letter had only arrived just a few hours before the all-important cargo, itself, so the staff had been largely caught off guard._ _

__Mary, luckily, has already confined herself to her room of her own free will, too busy immersed in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ to notice the arrival of the carriage. As an extra precaution, though, a young man is posted outside her door to keep her from discovering the coffin without a proper warning, first._ _

__A number of the high-ranking staff think they should wait for a ceremony until Jonathan’s return, but others argue that they ought to get it done straight away, thinking it wrong to keep a body aboveground so long. The butler Stephen’s word is final, and the decision, in the end, is to send for a minister and a gravedigger._ _

__Bertha obtains one of the smaller maid’s black uniforms, the only thing in the house fit for a funeral, and takes it over her shoulder up to Mary’s room. The girl’s countenance sinks deeper than the maid had thought possible at the sight of the black dress, her new expression harshly juxtaposing the one she’d worn before, when she’d been finding a pleasant and weightless escape in the giant book in her lap._ _

__Needing no more than the black mourning garb, and the look on Bertha’s face to understand the meaning of the maid’s presence, Mary looks out the open window towards the little family graveyard (resting place to two centuries of Randalls, and contained by a waist-high black fence), to see two young men at work… digging._ _

__“The young master’s coffin arrived just an hour or so ago, Mistress,” says Bertha, not trying too hard to conceal the sorriness from her tone._ _

__But sorrow or no sorrow, Mary soon becomes as good as paralyzed, and it’s virtually impossible for Bertha to force the girl into the black dress, as her limbs grow stiff when she needs them to be cooperative, and grow limp when she needs them to be strong._ _

__Sadness lays thick over the whole household. Alexander, when home, had always brightened the mood of the place with his friendly nature. But though all who had known him will miss him dearly, there had been no personal connections deep enough to warrant tears from any of the servants—except for, perhaps, Stephen, who had practically raised the boy himself, and is found in a corner somewhere dabbing at his eyes by one of the maids around noon, who had sought him out to alert him to the minister’s arrival._ _

__The eight highest-ranking members of the household have all donned mourning garb of their own, by then, and make their way in a quiet black line (three of the strong young men bearing the coffin on their shoulders) to the small graveyard, where they join the minister, and the two little gravedigger boys who linger nearby, in silence._ _

__Bertha eventually yields to the fact that there will be no possibility of getting Mary into the black dress, and instead finds a black shawl to wrap around her, before leading her step by step down the stairs and out into the bright, windy day._ _

__The minister looks with pity upon the small girl, putting Bertha’s anxious mind at ease with a quiet nod that tells her he doesn’t have it in him to disapprove sternly of the girl’s state of undress, as Bertha had feared he might._ _

__So, Mary, still clutching the pillow to her chest, stands next to Bertha at the head of the grave, while the coffin is set carefully into the earth._ _

__The minister reads from his small Bible, and recites a short blessing of his own devising._ _

__Then, the two boys fill the grave with dirt again, and the minister—not before crossing himself and placing a broad, conciliatory hand on Mary’s trembling shoulder—departs._ _

__There is no headstone yet (the death and the burial had been too short-notice for that), so it is estimated that for another few weeks, there will be only the mound of disturbed earth, and no official marker._ _

__The other members of the household who had been present for the ceremony hurry back indoors after the ordeal is over with. Bertha and Stephen remain standing on either side of Mary for a few minutes longer, until Stephen places a meaningful hand on Bertha’s shoulder, and the two of them turn back for the house, as well, leaving the girl alone._ _

__For many hours, through the entirety of the afternoon and into the early part of the evening, Mary stands at the side of the grave. Only when the evening light has turned the chilly woods golden, her legs have gotten so tired that they regularly stiffen sorely or shake dangerously, and her head has been overcome by dizziness, does she finally kneel. And when dusk arrives, she lays down fully, her ear pressed to the ground and her legs tucked up to her chest, clutching the pillow tightly._ _

__Insects land briefly on her shoulders, and then buzz away just as suddenly. She lies so still and quiet, that it’s as though her very soul is seeping out of her body and into the ground below._ _

__Just after nightfall, Bertha can hold herself back no longer, and goes out to the graveyard. But her attempts to persuade the girl to come back into the house fall on deaf ears, and the small, stiff body laying on the chilly ground refuses to budge._ _

__Eventually, the maid is forced to return to the house and retrieve one of the male servants, who then kneels down and picks Mary up from the ground. Though her eyes are wide open, she shows no sign of lucidity or protest but for a brief reaching-out of her hand towards the grave. But then her arm soon becomes limp again, and she submits to the man’s arms, passing out. Bertha, carrying the pillow, follows the man and the girl back to the house, guiding their footsteps by the light of an outheld candle._ _

* * *

__The floodgates break at last when Mary wakes up the next morning._ _

__After the terrible laying-down-by-Alex’s-grave spectacle (which had been much talked about through the night by the servants, and only intensified previous gossip about the girl’s connections to the youngest Randall brother), something in the girl cracks, and the silence she’d held for so many days gives way to a nonstop crying._ _

__The intensity of her tears fluctuates dramatically throughout the day, from uncontrollable wailing as she paces up and down the hallway wringing her hands—to sitting silently looking out the window as tears drip from her eyes and her shoulders tremble weakly every so often._ _

__Though her grief for Alex is manifest, the more she cries the more she thinks, and soon the subject of her tears has extended to Jonathan, as well—from whom there still has been no word. In fact, throughout the day, though she continues to cry, her thoughts gradually shift away from Alex almost entirely._ _

__Back inside that dreary sickroom back in Edinburgh, Jonathan had been so darkly quiet, so separate from Mary and Claire as they tried to keep Alex’s breathing under control, that the girl had almost been able to forget about him for long periods of time, her entire mind focused on the ailing man in the bed. But now that she thinks back on those final days, Jonathan becomes more and more—through the blurred lens of her tears and her frayed heart—of a quiet, anxious figure, who must have been just as desperate, helpless and distraught over his brother’s state as Mary had felt. And although John’s violent reaction to his brother’s death won’t be soon forgotten, a part of Mary has managed—desperately—to forgive him._ _

__Really, she thinks as she shuffles back and forth down the hall, clutching the pillow close to her chest and sobbing damply against pursed lips, Jonathan is very much an older version of Alexander. With him, at least, she will have a part of Alex with her always. They even look alike, though John, she has observed, is obviously older and often gruffer._ _

__But that doesn't mean he will be incapable of caring for her, or she of growing to love him._ _

__And has her tears continue to ebb and flow, her pulse fluctuating erratically for hours on end, her body finding the most comfortable position now crawling on the floor, now sitting on the bed, now laying down on the grass outside, and a myriad of other places… Mary finds that she has already started to fall in love with John._ _

__By the time that night arrives (though darkness will not bring the tears to an end), it seems to Mary as though, with the return of Jonathan from wherever he is now, will also somehow come the return of Alex._ _

* * *

__The girl soon starts to get sick in the mornings from her pregnancy. Bertha gets her to eat as often as possible, but she can only make her consume just a little bit at a time, and the maid as well as Stephen soon grow nervous about the health of the child._ _

__Really, though, there’s precious little that they can do to make the girl eat a full meal, since she’s so insistent on not doing so, only consuming small bits of bread or fruit, if anything at all. Not to mention the extra layer of difficulty that is added to the task of swallowing, as a result of her ceaseless crying._ _

__Mary takes to going out into the orchard of apple trees and walking amongst the trunks and overhanging branches in the freezing morning fog, not even dressed beyond the thin layer of Alex’s nightshirt. Now, not only is the pillow constantly by her side, but so is the thick volume of Shakespeare, which she often takes outdoors, and reads aloud while sitting on the ground next to Alex’s grave._ _

__A grim mood spreads like a contagion throughout the members of the household. And it soon comes to seem—even to Bertha—that nothing can be done but to look out helplessly and anxiously at the ruined child from the solitary windows of the house..._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well… that was a lot.
> 
> Can I briefly address the unnervingly spot-on casting that was done for the Randall brothers in the show? When I first saw Alexander onscreen, I thought he _was_ Jonathan, the facial features are so incredibly similar. Not only did this do wonders for the show itself, but the extreme similarity in appearance is also ideal for this story. Towards the end of this chapter, Mary starts to idealize Jonathan, becoming deluded enough to tell herself that he is actually Alexander, just in a different body. This is not a hard thing to do, for her, because of how close they are in looks… and this way of thinking could easily become dangerous for Mary.
> 
> Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that a young girl such as Mary would have been socially obligated to be in mourning in this scenario, since she had no “legitimate” connection to the deceased… not sure about that. Regardless, wearing Alex’s nightshirt constantly is her own form of mourning—and something I believe is far more personal and intimate than wearing black.
> 
> **Yes, _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ being the play Mary is reading when Alex’s corpse is delivered to the house is intentional. If you don’t already know the story and themes, what’s important is that the play is primarily about how people tend to fall in love with those they find physically attractive (or friendly/good/appealing/safe _on the surface_ ). Which is definitely the case with Mary’s desperate idealization of Jonathan at the end of this chapter.
> 
> My greatest appreciation goes out to everyone who has been leaving kudos and commenting! I’m not embarrassed to say that I *LITERALLY* jump up and down when I see a new comment in my inbox. Your feedback is what makes me want to keep writing!
> 
> The next chapter will push even further into the Alternate Universe in which this story takes place, as Captain Randall wakes up after the Battle of Culloden…
> 
> Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn  
> Friday 1 January 2021


	7. 7. After the Battle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s a shorter chapter to give us all a bit of a break!
> 
> A quick note on the timeline: The idea is that the events of this chapter overlap with chapter six. The battle was fought on the sixteenth of April, which would have been the day—or the day after—Mary arrived in Sussex. So as Jonathan and Jamie both recover from the battle, Alex is being buried and Mary is suffering through the grief that we bore witness to in the last chapter.
> 
> Again, please excuse any awkward sentences... it's late where I am.

In acknowledgment of his rank, the men in charge of organizing the housing for the injured in the wake of the battle had placed Captain Jonathan Wolverton Randall in his own room, apart from the larger hall stuffed uncomfortably and unhygienically with low-ranking men.

They’d also been considerate enough to put him in the quietest of the houses being used for tending to the wounded, so that he wouldn’t have to be constantly plagued by the screams of the dying.

Or, rather, they’d been _smart_ enough to do so.

One of the unfortunate individuals put in charge of harvesting the still-living British from the field (and finishing off the nearly-dead or injured Jacobites with their bayonets), had recognized Randall by his unmistakable sharp jawbones, broad forehead, long nose, and by the peculiar lines on either side of his face—and had warned against putting him in with the other men.

The soldier had witnessed first-hand many acts of singular brutality done at the captain’s hands, and though he’d been unconscious, then, laying there on the field, he’d seemed just as much a threatening force as he would have been, fully well and standing up, uninjured. And nobody was willing to risk being "Black Jack"’s next victim, especially when it was well within their abilities to simply put him in his own room. So, they’d done just that.

And, over the four days it had taken to tend the captain’s injuries, though the private room hadn’t seemed to incline him to be any kinder to the healers, they’d been convinced that they’d made the right decision. The damage that a thrown glass and a number of punches had caused, surely would have been increased tenfold had he been placed in a cot among the _common_ soldiers, the likes of which he was accustomed to commanding, not being treated alongside.

Those four days had borne witness to a gradually- but firmly-laid foundation for recovery from two significant (one deep sword-inflicted wound along the outside of his right upper-arm, and a broken bone in his calf courtesy of a horse who’d stepped on him once he’d already fallen unconscious) and multiple more minor injuries all over his battered but remarkably resilient body.

Now, he sits on the edge of the cot and looks out the open window at the nearby road, and the bleak early-spring fields beyond, the subtly rolling landscape frequently interrupted by copses of barren black trees. He’s dragged the bedside table over, and on it sits a piece of parchment which he’s managed to fill halfway using an impossible quill—the only one his attendants had been able to find. After ascertaining that he was Most Definitely and Without a Doubt going to live, he’d reasoned that he ought to set about writing a letter to Sussex, informing them of his well-being and his imminent return. A carriage is set to arrive within just two hours, to deliver him to the docks, and it would be inappropriate to arrive home without having sent a letter ahead of him by way of a fast horse.

But his mind had soon been stolen away from the necessary task of the letter by other thoughts. Particularly, thoughts of Jamie Fraser. And that damned wife of his, too.

James Fraser had survived the battle. Randall had asked obsessively enough that a number of lower-ranking men had been forced to go out into the field and search among the dead for “Red Jamie,” and they’d come back empty-handed. But Randall hasn’t the slightest idea where the Highlander could be, now. The sudden issue of his location is something he had never foreseen having to worry about because, frankly, he’d trusted Claire’s word when it came to her prophecy of the date of his death.

But now the two of them are always there, in the back of his mind. Even through the extreme pain of having the bone in his calf set, their faces had been floating there in the deepest—but still quite tangible—part of his consciousness. And when an officer had entered his room to report on the number of men in his command who had died, his fist had not clenched in reaction to the figures he heard, but at the thought of that bitch, and the terrible, terrible lie she’d told.

He never would have thought it would be this disappointing to have the prophecy of one’s death disproved. But, it turns out, it’s the most disappointing thing that can be experienced in this world. The prospect of imminent death had set his every fiber on edge, and given him a sense of urgency that had heightened his senses and kept his mind on a narrower, more controlled track than ever before; had made him less prone to distraction by unsavory temptations.

Now, the life that lays before him seems comparable to a wide-open field home to many diverse and complex scents in which he is an untrained dog let loose. And he truly fears, as he looks out the window at the fog rolling over the hills, that he will never amount to more than exactly that: a foolish dog, both aimless and frantic in its pursuit of momentary but meaningless goals.

He sees clearly, now, that they’ve all become entangled in that unfulfilled prophecy and its consequences—himself, of course, but also Madam Fraser, Jamie… and his own _wife_ , Mary. Whom—he’s made himself believe—he never would have agreed to wed, had he not been entirely and fully convinced of the truth in what Claire had whispered into his ear that night in the dungeons of Wentworth Prison.

Just a few moments after she’d told him ( _April sixteenth, seventeen-forty-six_ ), he’d pushed her forward and she’d taken a fall through a trapdoor in the floor, landing in a deep, dark cave strewn with the corpses of the executed. But now she has gotten her revenge on him—it seems to Randall that he, too, has been pushed into a dark, dirty hole in the ground. But, unlike that vile place at Wentworth, his dark cavern doesn’t lead to freedom.

As he sits there, his upper arm starting to ache from holding the quill so long and his calf prickling unpleasantly, looking out at the foggy fields and then back at his letter, the dull sounds of the moaning of the injured barely piercing through his subconscious, Randall knows that the false witch will come to rue that fateful lie.

In time, he’s sure, they all will.

* * *

Jamie had lain there on his back in a heap of other dead or near-dead men for what could have been hours after the battle. He had watched as the Redcoats pulled their wounded from the field, and brutally finished off men loyal to the Jacobite cause, sticking their bayonets mercilessly into their chests and leaving them to bleed out—many, right before his eyes. He’d been ready to cry out, to make known the fact of his aliveness, in hopes that one of them would finish him off; put him out of his misery.

But then, he’d seen him. A mere stroke of red fabric in motion against the grey blur of the field and the dead upon it, at first. One of many still-living British he’s witnessed being lifted onto a cart, to be taken off for treatment. But then, something in the shape of the shoulders had alerted him to the Redcoat’s identity. And in the few moments he’d been able to keep his eyes on the man, he’d become incapable of denying it. It was a body with which he’d been thoroughly acquainted, and would not soon—if ever—forget the shape and movement of. _Randall’s body._

For a moment, it had seemed an all-important event, and a part of his chest hed strained upward, in a mindless determination to reach him, to shake him away and finish him in the most painful way he could imagine… and he’d been imagining it for a long, long time.

But then the cart had moved on, and the moment had lost its worth, suddenly seeming nothing more than a dream or an illusion, as a dark purple cloud of unconsciousness had come back to claim him again.

He’d stayed there well into the night, slowly freezing as it started to snow. A vision had come to him, a vision that seemed so real he’d been sure that death was near… it was her, just before him, his Sassenach, walking towards him from across the bloody, grey field, like an angel of light, coming to take him away, to softly lead him into the afterlife.

But the possibility had soon soured as the fair-skinned lass had suddenly morphed into Rupert: his eyepatch standing out from his red face, his red hair down around him like a stormcloud, asking if he was alive.

 _Let me be,_ he’d begged. _Let me be._

But Rupert, with a stubbornness to match Jamie’s own, had hoisted him up in the snow, and he’d had no strength with which to fight as he’d been half-dragged to a house—little more than a shack—near the Moor, where he’d suffered through the remainder of the night and well into the morning alongside a score of other Jacobite wounded… some of whose moaning suddenly ceased at the coldest point in the night, as their souls were borne away.

And luckily so, for just after dawn their hideout had been discovered by a number of Redcoats, led by one who introduced himself as Lord Melton, and announced that those who remained alive would soon be shot.

When they’d asked if any man would volunteer to be executed first, Jamie had raised his voice without a second thought. He’d suffered great pain in his time, Christ knew, but the wound in his leg combined with the hopelessness that infected his brain, punctuated by the absence of his Sassenach, would soon drive him to madness and wasn’t a pain he was determined to persist through.

But it seemed fate had a different plan in store, for upon stating his name, the Redcoat heading the operation had knelt down beside him, introducing himself as John Gray’s brother, a man who believed he owed Jamie a debt of honor and was determined to pay that debt by saving his life.

And despite his protests, and efforts to die through pure willpower, when night came around, Jamie found himself being loaded into a wagon of hay drawn by a single horse and driven by a bribed man.

At his next clear moment of consciousness, he was coming around to the sight of his sister and her husband, leaning over the side of the wagon.

Though his will to live didn’t increase much over the next few days, his sister’s skill—combined with the fresh air and familiar smells of home—had managed to nurse him back to health. It wasn’t until the shock of the battle had faded enough for his mind to stand on its own two feet again—when he had finally stumbled out of that fog of madness and pain—that he had remembered…

Remembered the sight of that bastard Randall: still alive, if barely… and realized that he had only been begging for death all along because of that memory-occluding haze.

For he has a promise to uphold.

It had been his wife’s final request to him before he’d sent her through the magical stones at craigh na dun, before the battle had begun. If things were to go wrong, she’d said; if Randall were to live, not die, on the battlefield, then he must promise her that he would rescue Mary Hawkins from his family estate at Sussex, and ensure her safety from the man.

He’d already sworn to himself that, not only would Randall die on that Moor, but that he would be the one to do it, himself—even if it was the last thing he ever did. So, the promise was not a difficult one to consider, and he’d made it without batting an eye.

But now that Randall has been spared by fate, the promise is much more important than it had been when he’d first made it—but not any less difficult to uphold. Jamie had been disgusted enough, already, to hear of the poor lass’s marriage to that sick bastard, even when Claire had been so certain that none of the vile scenarios the relationship conjured up in his mind would come to fruition. And now that those scenarios have become legitimate possibilities—all too legitimate for Jamie’s liking—it is a promise he is anxious to fulfill.

Almost immediately upon remembering what is now his sole true purpose on the earth, Jamie pulls himself up out of his sickbed, and attempts to depart from Lallybroch by horse. But his sister encounters him at the bottom of the stairs and, upon hearing what his plans had been, treats him to a merciless dose of reality.

Making it to Sussex would be impossible for him in the first place, being a wanted man, as he is, and his wounds are hardly conducive to a journey that would take many weeks if not undergone at a full and constant gallop. Besides, he and the others must hide away or they will surely be captured by the Redcoats still ruthlessly patrolling the region… and risk betraying other men and women that remain loyal to the (now-extinguished) Jacobite cause, in the process.

Put in his place, Jamie slinks back up the stairs to his room, and shuts the door, laying down in solitude.

Now, it doesn't seem so terrible to him that Claire is no longer with him. He couldn’t bear for her to know the state of things; to know that he would so easily give up on his promise—or, at least, put it off until the first possible moment at which it might be conducted safely. As his sister had implied, he still has a family of his own, and to be captured would mean certain punishment for them all... and that possibility is one he cannot abide.

Surely, Claire would curse the entire situation to high heaven, letting loose that inner sailor’s tongue which he so loved.

In time, though, he would manage to coax her into his arms, and to comfort her.

But Claire isn’t there for him to hold. She is two-hundred years in the future, likely laying in someone else’s arms by now. And so Jamie is left further from comfort, himself, than he has ever been before; leaning only on the knowledge that, at the time when the Redcoats’ pursuit of remaining Jacobites has died down—and it will, eventually—he will _then_ set out on his horse and ride south, hard, to rescue that poor lass from Randall’s clutches.

And to teach the bastard his last and most painful lesson, while he’s at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As much as I loved how, in canon, Jamie and Jonathan are the last two soldiers left fighting on the field full of dead men, that couldn’t be kept for this story (because if that were the case, then it would have been impossible for both of them to survive). There is a little bit of difficulty in departing from canon, in that sense (since canon is just so, so great, already), but I think those sacrifices will be worth it in the future. Speaking of...
> 
> Next up: John returns to the estate in Sussex. In other words... here comes the drama.
> 
> Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn  
> Friday 1 January 2021


	8. 8. Apples

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your hits and kudos! As always, I would love to hear from you in the comments (nudge-nudge, wink-wink)!
> 
> I don’t have any specific songs to recommend for this chapter, but in general I continue to recommend Loreena McKennitt, Enya and Max Richter (his albums _Memoryhouse_ , _The Blue Notebooks_ , _Sleep_ , and _Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons_ are absolutely spectacular). All three artists are perfect for settling down and improving focus, while boosting up the story with some very deeply emotional tracks.
> 
> We will be seeing and hearing just a little bit more of the “old” Mary in this chapter (i.e. Paris). She’s under a tremendous amount of stress, and doesn’t quite know what to do with herself. Mary has absolutely no idea how to be a wife. And Jonathan… well, let’s just say he’s new to this whole “to love and to cherish” thing, too.
> 
> Warning: mourning, and scenes of mild (for Jonathan) manipulation and physical aggression.

Mary has been lingering excitedly at the front windows all morning, her hands clasped tightly together in anticipation, when the carriage containing her husband finally arrives in the front drive.

Ever since Jonathan’s letter had arrived a day before, she’s fluttered incessantly at Bertha’s side, her eyes just a bit brighter, and her voice quicker and more high-pitched. To the maid’s relief, the girl had agreed to put on a dress—a modest brown paisley. Though still, underneath, she’d insisted upon keeping Alex’s nightshirt on, and she still hasn’t stopped carrying the old and now quite foul-smelling pillow everywhere she goes.

A number of the servants have been whispering amongst themselves all morning, nervous about the master’s arrival. It’s well known to all the household that Jonathan is a mercurial man, and more than once they’ve borne witness to small, physical acts of blunt impatience that hadn’t left any scars, but had left a few of the more subservient members of the staff crying or shocked momentarily out of their wits.

None of them has the slightest idea how he will be feeling after battle, how injured he may or may not be, how affected he may or may not be by the death of his brother. It is generally suspected, though, among them all, that Mary’s bright and desperate mood will not bode well with the man. So, when he steps out of the carriage with a wooden crutch and cast on his leg—brushing away the footman’s offered hand—and makes his way with a hard-set face and deep, staccato breaths towards the house where Mary earnestly waits by the door, the staff holds their collective breath.

The moment one of the servants opens the door and Jonathan limps bitterly across the threshold, Mary rushes forward, all smiles, her eyes wide and anxious. Looking at her, Jonathan is slightly startled—behind his loyal, stiff countenance—at how changed she is, from when he’d last seen her. There’s something that strikes him wrong about the Mary he sees before him, now, and he is instantly... _annoyed_. In Edinburgh, she’d at least given off the illusion of being something resembling a young woman, stable and contained, and had at least not seemed too absurd when caught in spells of sniveling—which she so frequently had been. But now, she’s a mere needy child, with overly-excited, pitifully wide eyes… not to mention the pillow she clutches so desperately to her side.

“John!” she squeaks with a step forward, looking earnestly into his face, the sound of her voice grating ridiculously against his eardrums. “John, I’ve been ever so anxious to— Oh, John! What _happened_ to you?”

She hadn’t previously noticed his injuries through the window, but now that she notices the cast, the crutch and his limp, she stops just short of embracing him— _thank God_ , he thinks. Upon further investigation, she also notices that he holds his arm awkwardly, and that there is a bad scrape on his cheekbone that has scabbed over, but is still jagged and evident against the rest of his skin.

Jonathan grimaces, turning halfway towards her and putting on his most sarcastic smile. “ _Battle,_ my dear.”

Mary’s eyebrows furrow at his reaction, and she takes another quarter-step towards him, her large eyes looking desperately into his familiar hazel ones. “Johnny—”

In the time it takes to snap one’s fingers, Captain Randall’s demeanor darkens. His first instinct is to slap the child across the face, hard enough to bring her to the floor. But he refrains with a majestic amount of self-control; a self-control that pounds against his forehead, swelling in his brain like a tumor, and almost gives him a headache.

The violent act that had nearly come to pass is not lost on Mary, though—she sees the menacing darkness in his face and eyes, and her breath catches inside her throat as she steps back quietly, recoiling.

 _Good_ , thinks Jonathan.

“You’re not to call me that,” he says slowly, sternly, to ensure that the words sink in.

Mary understands perfectly, and nods her head up and down before bowing her neck in apology. She’s sure she’d been annoying, or insolent, or one of the other many negative adjectives her father had so often used to describe her, and she silences herself, only hoping that John will forgive her.

He does nothing at all, however, his attention shifting easily away from her, as though she had suddenly become an ant crawling across the floor. He gets one of the young male servants—who had been looking on nervously throughout the whole encounter—to help him up the stairs to his room, and calls out orders to no one in particular for parchment to be brought along after him.

Mary, her hands still clasped nervously together, looks after him up the stairs for a long time, standing there even after he has disappeared from sight as though paralyzed, until Bertha dissolves out of the group of servants, takes her arm and leads her into another room.

* * *

During the following days, while continuing to quickly heal from his injuries, Jonathan takes up the habit of keeping watch over his wife from his bedroom window, which is not difficult as she has taken to spending nearly all day outdoors on the northern side of the house. He observes her crying in the orchards, walking along the edge of the forest and wailing or spending long hours staring blankly at the dark wall of trees.

Jonathan finds her an interesting specimen to watch, and so sometimes will spend an entire day doing nothing but sitting in his chair by the window and watching her, only turning away when she wanders near the little family graveyard—but she never once goes in, quickly passing by the fence and sometimes not even seeming to register its presence at all, turning back towards the orchard or the woods.

Over the course of his observation of her, he comes to the conclusion that Mary is a generally pitiful creature—the kind of child who could only manage to get under his feet. And yet there is something about that horror that is ever-present in her eyes, and the intimidated stoop of her shoulders, that is undeniably enticing to him…

In the coming days, as the strength returns to Jonathan’s body (the doctor from Rye tells him with a look of awe and surprise on his face that it should only be a week before the cast can be removed from his leg—though the crutch will have to remain for a while longer), he leaves his room and spends more time in other parts of the house, more often—to keep himself from inactivity and severe boredom, if nothing else.

His study is his preferred haunt, but still, sitting down all day long has never been conducive to his nature, and so he soon takes up scaring the servants to amuse himself, walking sometimes in circles around the inside of the house, slowly feeling himself go mad.

Mary makes it her business to worry over him at every moment he is out in the halls and not shut away in his room or his study, however, fluttering around him wherever he goes, asking him questions about the battle—and even once, foolishly, asking after the whereabouts of James Fraser… the mention of whom nearly makes him raise his hand to her.

The lingering pain from his wounds he attempts to numb with drink. But after a day of stumbling around, barely lucid, he decides against carrying on with that coping mechanism, not wanting to sacrifice his control. It would be altogether too easy for him to do something to Mary if he didn’t keep his sobriety around him. And so he suffers through the pain of his healing wounds, instead. This makes him irritable and unpleasant for the girl to be around, which, he knows, is a good thing: the further he can get her to stay away from him, the less hard he has to work to stay away from her.

And yet, despite his frightful demeanor towards his wife, she inexplicably continues to crawl back to his side, day after day. Thus, it remains very much Jonathan’s task to steer clear of Mary. A task which becomes increasingly more difficult with every passing minute, as the girl’s clinginess only grows the more he resists her presence.

One day, in a desperate attempt to make his intentions clear, he roughly pulls his hand away from her when she tries to take it. She steps back quickly, skittishly, apologizing and turning to flee from the room, making him believe he’s succeeded—but lo and behold, just under an hour later, she’s back again, asking him if he might like to accompany her on a stroll in the woods. An offer that he refuses, but with difficulty.. for at this point he’s begun to ask himself whether teaching her a lesson wouldn't be the most efficient way to deal with the abysmal problem of her apparent obsession with him, and it would be so, so deliciously easy, in the woods, to strike her, to pin her little writhing body against a tree trunk and…

It doesn't take long for him to quickly grow desperate, as he realizes that he really has absolutely nothing to do but to sit around and “heal” all day long. And in the midst of this itching, intense boredom—the greatest of boredoms that has ever plagued him in all his forty years—it becomes nearly impossible to keep Mary’s subservient, pining nature, and obvious idealization of him form tempting him into a Gordian Knot formed by his own impulsive actions.

 _Listen, Mary_ , he imagines himself saying to her. _I’m extremely busy at the moment, and you really should take care to stay out of my way, or I might be forced to slit your throat._ But he never brings himself to say the words aloud.

In the end, it takes a shouting match between himself and an impudent young male servant who had dared to make mention of Alexander in his presence (in a mindless rage, Jonathan throws a heavy decanter at the young man’s head, whose corner draws blood), to finally make Mary understand. And from that point onward, she takes refuge in that old bustling maid Bertha’s arms for the majority of the day, finally leaving the confined and exasperated Captain largely alone.

* * *

Eventually, affairs manage to settle enough so that the only time he is forced to suffer her presence is during the three daily meals, which they take in the dining room, Jonathan seated at the head of the long wooden table, and Mary at the foot.

Sometimes the many arm’s lengths of wood that lay between them bear witness to polite, restrained small-talk between the husband and wife. But during most meals, there is only a pervasive and thick silence, in which Mary stares at her plate or down into her lap, and Jonathan eats almost viciously, his silent disapproval of Mary’s consistent lack of appetite radiating dangerously across the room.

Her bad habit of eating extremely little, though, doesn’t keep her morning sickness from recurring daily, always a little before or a little after eight o’clock. Usually, breakfast has already been cleared by the time the nausea rolls around, but this morning doesn't adhere to the usual, and Mary finds herself suffering from dizziness and a queasy feeling when Jonathan is still only halfway through his meal, and she’s only managed to consume a bite of scone, and two slices of fruit.

A feeling of shock coils in the girl’s throat, and a deep and shameful red suffuses her cheeks suddenly, nearly forcing her over the edge into hysterics as she realizes what is about to happen. But after another strained moment, she reasons with herself that she can’t help it, and stands up suddenly to Jonathan’s pointed alarm, rushing out of the room with a whispered “excuse me,” to avoid becoming sick in her husband’s presence.

Bertha is waiting for her in the hallway just outside the doors of the dining room, holding a bucket which she’s taken to keeping about her person between seven in the morning and midday, as a precaution. The maid kneels beside Mary on the floor as the _poor dear_ manages to cough up the precious little she’d eaten at the table minutes before, and then commences to cough and choke, dry-heaving to no avail, her stomach having nothing else to offer up.

Jonathan, his appetite promptly swept away by the sound of the girl’s retching echoing from beyond the door, leans back in his chair with a disappointed exhale. And, when the girl slinks back into the room after another minute, he tosses his napkin onto his plate, and leans forward, waiting for the child to seat herself before drawing her attention to him by clearing his throat, staring pointedly at her as she takes a trembling sip from her glass of water, and dabs at her mouth with her napkin.

Once he’s sure he has her attention, he says, “This would be considerably less miserable of a process, for you, if you made a habit of consuming food and water.”

Mary only looks down at her plate and starts to cry silently.

Jonathan is thoroughly confused by this nonsensical reaction—he’d thought his tone had been relatively agreeable; kind, even. And he barely manages to contain a roll of his eyes before muttering to himself, “Oh, for God’s sake,” and taking his leave of the table and his crying wife, snapping his fingers as a signal to the servants to clear away the meal before stalking out of the room.

* * *

Though he has rarely been with her, Jonathan still keeps a careful eye on Mary throughout the day, and his patience for her various pitiful behaviors quickly grows short.

“Stephen,” he says one afternoon, cornering the old butler rather aggressively in the corridor. “What’s this business with Mary and that pillow she’s so insistent on taking everywhere?” He’s noticed that she manages to let it go when she joins him for meals, but still makes a habit of holding onto it at all other times, when she believes he’s not looking.

“I’m afraid, sir, I don’t know,” Stephen responds, truthfully. “But she’s refused to be separated from it since her arrival.”

Jonathan, having gained the necessary information, dismisses Stephen from his presence, and stands brooding in the hallway for a few minutes longer, thinking. It has come to see to him that Mary is very much a child, who needs to be trained if he desires her to act in the way he understands as proper and as far from annoying to his own sensibilities as possible. And in the case of the pillow, it is quite clear that the only way for him to achieve that goal, is by way of confiscation.

So, one day, when Bertha has taken Mary to town to be measured for some new clothing (taking into account the change in the size of her middle-section that will be slowly starting to take place in a matter of weeks), Jonathan locates the pillow—sitting where the old woman had convinced the girl to leave it, on the chair in the entryway of the house, just by the door—and deposits it in the hands of one of the young maids, giving her strict and unyielding orders to burn it.

When Mary arrives home later to find the chair by the door empty, she promptly begins wringing her hands, and embarks on a full search of the house that ends in the realization that there is nothing left of Alex’s pillow but for a pile of ashes sitting in the kitchen fireplace.

The loss of the pillow, which has become precious to her over the past weeks and which she cannot imagine not clutching to her side at all times, sends her over the edge. Miserable, she sobs through the evening, skipping dinner and laying alone in her room, continuing to cry loudly into the night.

Jonathan manages to bear the sound of her distress—which can be heard all throughout the house for its volume—for a few hours. But by the time nine o’clock at night rolls around, and the girl still hasn’t managed to bring herself under control, he leaves his room and crosses the hall to pound unforgivingly on her door, shouting loudly and deeply: “I will have _silence!_ ”

And to his palpable relief, after choking out a few final, muted sobs, Mary becomes as quiet as a mouse.

On the other side of the door, Mary channels her devastation into silent shudders rather than sobs and moans, a heavy veil of horrid guilt settling over her, made sharper by the fear that the sound of Jonathan’s bellowing voice had stirred up in her. Of course, he had been right to be angry with her. She’d been silly to react in such a way… but Jonathan had been unkind to burn the pillow… _or had he been right?_

Regardless of the pillow, the girl is suddenly deeply aware of another precious item which might receive similar treatment at Jonathan’s hands if not kept from his knowledge: Alex’s nightshirt. And though it pains her greatly to remove the now-familiar fabric from her body, she does so for the sake of its protection, folding it carefully and hiding it underneath her mattress, only taking it out to touch and smell at night, when she is alone and certain that nobody will find out.

The time is ripe for another confiscation a few days later; this time, of the collection of Shakespeare. Jonathan hadn’t even noticed it was missing from his study until he’d found himself searching for it in a spell of deep and desperate boredom, and had found it nowhere in his desk or, for that matter, in any of the spots where it ought to have been... _where Alex had often left it lying about in the days when he’d read nothing but Shakespeare, to the distress of their parents..._

He finds it at last in the most unlikely of places: in Mary’s lap, where she’s taken to sitting between the hours of two and three in the afternoon, alone in her room, sitting in her rocking chair next to the window facing the orchard and the woods.

Upon his entrance into her bedroom—he doesn’t bother to knock—the girl abruptly looks up at him, her eyes wide to see him standing there in the doorway, and with a look of such disappointment on his face. His hazel eyes are sharp and his mouth is set deeply, his eyebrows raised in warning. She only has time to say “John—” before he’s already crossed the room, and is suddenly removing the heavy book from her hands straightaway.

“ _Much Ado About Nothing_ ,” he observes aloud, looking down at the page she’d had the heavy volume open to. Then, he slaps it closed loudly, making her jump and flinch ( _wonderfully_ ), before looking up at her again with accusing eyes.

“What’s the matter?” he says with a disdainful smile, seeing the look of worry etched into the fragile features of her face. “You ought to thank me for protecting your precious little head from this nonsense. No good will come of it.”

Mary nods her head up and down, suppressing the instinct to apologize and instead saying, with a squeak, “Thank you, John.”

But he doesn't care to respond, and instead scoffs, his jaw twitching, a familiar sign of a deep distress lurking just below the surface of his ironically pleasant face, before he turns on his heel and slams her bedroom door on his way out.

In the coming days, Jonathan’s restlessness seems about to murder him for its intensity, and his mind has grown so bored, and his body so desperate for purpose (a common plague among men of action on leave) that he resorts to, one morning, looking out his bedroom window and declaring to himself that a number of the trees in the apple orchard have some definite problem in their uppermost branches, and must be chopped down at once.

Later, after breakfast, Mary catches up to him as he walks with purpose towards the back of the house—he doesn't make a habit of going outdoors often, so she naturally wonders what he could be planning to do. He nearly dismisses her, but chooses to tell her his plans, instead. Which—disappointingly—only results in an expression of concern on the child’s face. “But… that must be dangerous, for your arm,” she says.

Angered beyond comprehension by the response, and after he’d chosen to tell her of his plans instead of sending her away without an answer to satisfy her pesterings, his hand reaches out of its own volition and grips the girl firmly by her own upper arm. She gasps and recoils when he does so (and a part of himself warns that he should take it easy, that he should keep from becoming drawn in too far to the act of physical control), but he yanks her in closer, suddenly aroused by the slightness of her tiny body next to his comparably powerful one.

“I’ll be the judge,” he manages, gritting his teeth, “of what is good, and what is bad for my arm.”

And then, escaping, he lets her go with a slight shove, and smooths his hair back before continuing on his way, going out to the stables to find an axe.

The girl, though insolent, had been right to worry: the work does cause his arm to ache badly. But the sword wound itself has already healed, so there is no risk of tearing open the stitches and the pain originates mostly from strain. Besides, the manual labor soon succeeds in centering his mind and improving his sleep—which is the most he could have asked for.

* * *

The tension between them only continues to increase in the wake of that brief encounter, when Jonathan had felt himself growing hard at the sight of Mary's wide eyes, and the intoxicating proximity of her helpless body. In the days that follow, it becomes more difficult than ever before for him to control himself around her. There’s no better way to put it: Jonathan is pushed into a state of nothing short of _anger_ when he lays eyes on her… her body the catalyst for a fundamental sexual frustration, the likes of which he has never fallen prey to before.

So, on one particular morning when his self-control has already frayed considerably, something within him snaps at the sight of her, sitting at the other end of the long dining table, poking at her breakfast with her fork but not eating a single bit of it.

Mary is startled out of her daze when Jonathan slams his silverware down on his plate loudly, making the girl jump, and eliciting flinches from the two footmen positioned on either side of the double doors.

“ _Ridiculous child,_ ” he hisses at her. “You’re quite a miserable little thing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you cared little for yourself—but do you foster no regard whatsoever for the _child_ that is _attempting_ to _grow inside of you?_ ”

The words _my brother’s child_ remain unspoken, but are very tangible in the air, which suddenly seems motionless.

“I doubt he was expecting his own mother to be his adversary, in that endeavor,” he continues bitterly, with a ruthlessness of tongue that shocks even the footmen, and makes Mary’s face go blank, her body suddenly numb as it attempts to defend her against his accusations.

With a silent and terrifying anger, Jonathan stands up from his chair and walks towards her, dragging his fingertips along the smooth tabletop, his eyes boring into her paralyzed ones, his intentional footsteps deafening in her sensitive ears.

Mary thinks, for a moment, that he is finally going to hit her, and knows that she would deserve it, too. But he comes to stop right next to her instead, and only takes her fork from her paralyzed hand, piercing a piece of fruit with its tines and holding it up to her mouth.

“Eat,” he demands.

But she can’t. Her body has frozen of its own accord, and she has no say over it. She wants to open her mouth, but something in her jaw won’t allow her to do so, even when she tries with all her might.

Seeing that this will have to be accomplished the hard way, Jonathan grips the girl by her elbow, and twists her arm behind her at an awkward and sure-to-be-painful angle. He does this slowly, giving Mary plenty of opportunity to stop him at any time by simply opening her mouth and accepting the food. But her lips remain tightly sealed.

It’s slow, but in due time, she starts to whimper, and then to yowl at the burning sensation in her shoulder, sending tingles all the way to her fingertips. Jonathan knows that if he forces her arm much further, her shoulder could very well dislocate, and he snarls into her face as he watches her pupils dilate, and feels her breath quicken against his skin. He’s willing to push it that far, if need be… Hell, he’s _more_ than willing. He _hopes_ that she will continue to resist him so that he might get the chance to hear the sound she would make when it happened…

But just a moment before the last, just as he can feel her arm preparing to give way fully to his hand, her jaw finally relaxes—to Mary’s wide-eyed relief—and her mouth opens. Jonathan grimaces with a dampened but still-present satisfaction, and watches as she finally yields to him, slowly chewing on the piece of fruit.

Once she’s managed to swallow, he releases her arm (she whimpers when it returns to its regular position), and entrusts the fork to her hand before returning to his end of the table, from which he watches her take little bites of food and sips of water throughout the remainder of mealtime, feeling a heady sensation of release and… and… _control_ ; more than he’s seen her eat in weeks.

* * *

That night, a moaning wind grates in from the coast, ripping harshly across the corners of the house and stirring up a racket of creaking and clattering of the tree trunks and branches in the woods. The horses in the stables, too, are spooked, and often when the wind’s intensity spikes, they whinny and cry out in fear. The wind is so intense that it seems as though the house, itself, might be crushed or worn into dust if it keeps up much longer.

All the sounds of the night outside, combined with the crowded state of her own head, puts Mary in a state of distress, and makes it impossible for her to get to sleep.

She’d tried everything in her power—lifting up the mattress and putting on Alex’s nightshirt, then taking it off again, kneeling down in front of the fireplace in an effort to exhaust herself, counting up to one-hundred with her eyes closed, and then counting back down from one-hundred to zero. But none of these attempts had succeeded; something deep inside of her is fundamentally afraid, and it seems all at once to her that if she doesn’t get out of the bed and out of the room at that very instant, then she will be swallowed up forever, and might suddenly die, laying there restlessly.

At the next roar of the wind, she sits up and slips out of bed, clutching her shawl tightly around her shoulders as her feet encounter the freezing floor, and she hurries, wide-eyed, across the room.

Mary enters the dark, shadowy corridor a moment later, closing her bedroom door around behind her with a barely-detectable _creak_ , and looking around her, the familiar objects in the corridor suddenly seeming distorted and nightmarish in the darkness.

_What now?_

The girl stands there shivering in the cold for a full minute, the wind screaming just outside the window at the end of the hall, brushing its phantom fingertips against the shutters and threatening to leak in past the thin glass panes. Then, her panicked gaze focuses, and she looks between the two doors on the other side of the hall: Jonathan’s on the left, directly across from her own bedroom, and Alex’s just a few paces down, to the right. For a short series of moments, her breath seems just as loud inside of her own skull as the wind is, outside. Then both sounds seem to die down for the length of a heartbeat, and in that time, her feet turn decisively in the direction of Alex’s bedroom, padding across the runner carpet and coming to a stop just in front of the door.

She opens it cautiously, slowly, and its hinges squeak ever-so-softly as she pushes it forward into the room, clutching the doorknob tightly. A rush of cold air trickles eerily across her face and shoulders, and her eyes strain forward blindly into the pitch-darkness of the room—so black that it’s impossible to make out even the vague shapes of a bed, or a wardrobe.

“ _Alex?_ ” she whispers into the empty room.

Her head tilts forward by a few degrees, and her ear strains to detect some answering call, to hear him calling her name, in return. She finds herself straining so hard, in fact, that she thinks suddenly that she might be blocking Alex’s real voice from reaching her. So, she attempts to relax her mind, again whispering his name: “ _Alex?_ ”

But, even then, there is only a resounding quiet, and the humming of the wind.

Mary lingers there in the doorway for what seems a long time, waiting. But there is no response.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” she whispers under her breath, and her face curls as she starts to cry silently, an anxious congestion accumulating behind her nose as she holds back sobs, only breathing shallowly through the dampness of her mouth as she closes Alex’s door, and tiptoes down the hall to Jonathan’s room.

His door pushes forward into his room in perfect silence, and she opens and closes it without attracting any attention. The interior of the room mimics hers almost exactly, except for a few variations: his far wall lacks a vanity, and the dimensions of his room seem just a bit greater—but that might be an illusion, courtesy of the shadow of the flames in the fireplace flickering high and long across the ceiling.

But Mary pays no attention to the room itself, creeping on light feet across the rug to the side of the large four-poster bed where Jonathan lays sleeping on his back, wrapped tightly in blankets. There’s something gentle in his unconscious face that encourages her to follow through with her instincts, and so, trembling in her thin nightgown in the cold, her shawl offering little protection, she whispers his name, as she had whispered Alex’s.

“John—” she says, with a small little cry, a sound which promptly rouses the man with a jolting inhale.

He sits up suddenly at the sight of her, his blankets slipping from his shoulders and gathering around his waist as he looks at the girl questioningly. The sight of her there has quickly woken him, and he is little less than startled to see her in his room, standing there at his bedside with tears streaming down her face and shining in the firelight, her lips quivering.

“What’s the matter?” he says, caught off guard.

“John...” Mary’s breath quivers from her, a sob let out in broken pieces, and her words are a barely detectable whisper beneath her whimpering tears. “Will you please hold me?”

Jonathan had become certain over recent days that, when the girl ended up in his bed, it would be the result of him getting carried away, of him finally losing the long battle for control over his urges. Never would have imagined that the girl would show up at his bedside of her own free will, as she is, now. And at the sight of her there, there is no question inside of him as to how to react to her question, put in such a way that refusal would be a crime.

So, without saying anything, he merely nods his head, and lifts up the heavy layers of blankets, making room for Mary to burrow under the covers next to him—and, climbing up with her fragile little legs onto the mattress—she does just that. 

They lay there, Mary’s burning little body heaving with sobs against Jonathan’s, her fingers tightly clutching the fabric of his nightshirt, for a long time.

Something about this is disgusting to Jonathan, especially when the girl puts her damp face right against his chest, and he can feel the quaking of her little body, wracked by sobs, vibrating into the mattress.

But he’s willing to cope with it, and Mary soon falls asleep, at which point he pries her hot little fingers cautiously from his shirt, and turns over to lay on his back again, staring up at the canopy of his bed for a long time, his mind torn between satisfaction and struggle, before he finally falls asleep to the shushing sound of the wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You probably already gathered this, but just to make sure: When I say things like “[Mary] thinks for a moment that he is finally going to hit her, and knows that she would deserve it,” I don’t mean that literally. These statements are little pieces from Mary’s convoluted and self-conscious perspective, and are most certainly _not_ my own opinion.
> 
> I see a sick parallel between the situation with Mary, the pillow, and John’s confiscation of it—and the way some parents suddenly take away a pacifier from a young child (to stop a gap forming between the teeth, which is rumored to happen if pacifiers are allowed in the crib for too long). Does anyone else see this?
> 
> The title of this chapter, “Apples,” refers both to the literal apple orchard behind the house, and to the Biblical apple which Eve ate from the tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, damning humankind to mortality and pain. (It gets a lot more complicated than that, but that’s where I’ll leave it, for the sake of this chapter). As I see it, there was a certain amount of temptation involved in Mary’s decision to finally appear at Jonathan’s bedside. Not necessarily a sexual temptation, but the temptation that is her need to be comforted, and most importantly the temptation to finally give herself permission to realize that Alex is dead—or, at least, to take a step in that direction. When she calls into Alex’s old bedroom and hears no answer, his permanent absence begins to sink in. And that’s the reason why she allows herself to seek comfort from Jonathan, at all.
> 
> A mistake that, like Eve, Mary will soon come to sorely regret.
> 
> Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn  
> Sunday 3 January 2021


	9. 9. Disintegration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry it took so long for this to be posted!I had a really difficult time making myself get through this chapter… it’s not exactly a walk in the park.
> 
> Warning: This chapter bears witness to the _disintegration_ of Jonathan’s resolve. Prepare yourself for EXPLICIT AND DISTURBING descriptions of sex, sexual violence, and sexual manipulation. That basically makes up the entirety of this chapter’s content, with the exception of a brief introduction. 
> 
> Seriously. Explicit. Disturbing.

From that night onward, Mary and Jonathan sleep in the same bed. For the first few nights, Mary retires to her own room at first, before creeping over to his—as though she’s an innkeeper's daughter trying to have a secret affair with one of the patrons without her father noticing, and not his wife, who is expected—by the law and the Lord—to share his bed.

It doesn't take long for Jonathan to grow impatient with her tactics, and one afternoon he has her vanity moved into his room—a signal which she understands perfectly—and then, they take to retiring together in the early nights, Mary falling directly to sleep (or pretending to) and Jonathan following shortly after.

By God’s grace, the child doesn’t make a habit of clutching onto him and crying herself to sleep as she had done on that first night—making it considerably easier for Jonathan to “stay his impulses,” as that false witch Claire Fraser had practically ordered him to do, back in that Edinburgh tavern.

But as his carefully cultivated lack of desire to touch her begins to fray, those words take on a new meaning. “Stay your impulses,” she’d said to him, when he’d begged her to convince Alexander to give up his wild notion of marriage, and she’d bizarrely refused. And, for the first time, he actually considers it. How difficult could it be, really, to restrain that part of himself that others find unsavory—that he, too, becomes frightened of when he thinks of Mary, and thinks of Alex? His fast-growing desperation for the girl is such that he’s willing to test himself—to see if he might be able to… _finish_ , without causing her pain. Or, at least, not _too much_. He hasn’t the slightest idea of how to approach such a task, and it will doubtless be a test of his impulses, as the look of his little wife tends to make him want to strangle her—but God knows, for Alex’s sake, he’s going to try.

On their sixth night spent in the same bedroom, Jonathan comes through the door later than usual, after wrapping up some business in his study downstairs, to see Mary in her nightdress, sitting at the vanity and braiding her hair, as she does every night. As he shuts the door softly, she glances at him in the mirror, and he nods his greeting to her, before undressing as he always does, keeping on his nightshirt.

Usually, he would go to the bed and wait for her to come to join him under the covers. But tonight, he goes over to her instead, the warmth of the fireplace fluttering across his dark hazel eyes as he places his hands on her shoulders, just as she finishes braiding her hair and tying it securely.

“Tell me,” he says, gently massaging the little muscles of her shoulders, the deep vibration of his voice against her back prompting Mary to look up at him by way of the looking glass. Her wide eyes nearly make him shudder, and his tongue presses hard into the corner of his mouth. Once he has regained _control_ , and is sure he has her full attention, he continues. “How much longer… were you planning on denying me my rights as your husband?”

Her eyes widen as she realizes the meaning behind his words, and her ribs compress slightly around her lungs. She looks down at the tabletop of the vanity, her gaze desperately falling upon various objects: the small pile of her hairpins, her comb, the little silver box in which she keeps the small pearl earrings which Alex had given her during their early courtship.

Alex… Jonathan…

For the first time, she realizes that Jonathan had never given her a wedding ring.

By way of the looking glass, again, she glances up at him, her fragile chin trembling ever so slightly, the effect heightened by the flickering shadows of the flames from the fireplace. She’s about to say _but we agreed…_ but before she can do so, she realizes, with the help of a particularly intimidating quality in the depths of her husband’s eyes, that they had never made any such agreement.

She hangs her head, and feels her eyes welling with tears; tears that fall in heavy droplets to the top of the vanity, their weight beyond her control.

Jonathan’s hands tighten slightly around her shoulders, and she keeps herself from whimpering. “Mary,” he says, his voice a low and gentle, yet authoritative rumble. “I have been patient.”

Sadly, she is forced to agree. All at once, in her mind, he couldn’t be any more right. All this time, she’d barely harbored a thought of the wifely duties she’d been refusing to perform. Surely, it had been a thought more consistently present in Jonathan’s mind. And now, she sees that Jonathan probably ought to be angry with her, and that she is lucky for the kindness… for the _patience_ he has shown her. She grants herself another brief moment to tremble, before forcing herself together again and wiping away her tears with the backs of her hands.

Jonathan’s right hand leaves the little slope of Mary’s shoulder and he offers it to her, palm up, catching the firelight. It is the hand of a soldier, creased, callussed and tan, unlike the soft innocence of Alexander’s hands, which had felt so comfortable and natural in her own. But Mary knows that she must make her peace with Jonathan’s hands now. Must make peace with… _all_ parts of him. Suppressing a shudder, she rests her own small pale hand in his, and allows him to help her stand up from the vanity.

Standing at the bedside, before he can touch her, she looks up at him, her hands clasped together tightly. “Will it hurt the baby?” she whispers. Though the question is partly an attempt to delay the inevitable just a moment longer, it mostly comes from a genuine place of concern, and her eyes widen at the thought of something bad happening to Alexander’s child. In France, she’d heard horror stories…

But Jonathan—his body altogether too strong, too tall, and too near to her own too-little frame—shakes his head in the negative direction. “It won’t,” he says. He looks down at her hands, clasped in front of her maidenhood, and thinks of separating them, but then decides otherwise.

“Open your mouth,” Jonathan listens to himself say, beginning to retreat to that inner-seat of authority and glory from which he prefers to watch these events play out.

Mary, not knowing what else to do, obeys.

Jonathan remotely feels his arm moving upwards, the muscles of his shoulder complying with the demands of his subconscious mind. While the movement itself takes place on an effortless level, he feels his senses sharpening and becoming more vivid. The sensation is nearly identical to that which he feels in battle.

His fingers enter her mouth and latch around the bottom row of her teeth, pulling her slightly closer to him, her feet forced to shuffle forward in compliance with the pressure on her jaw. Her eyes have gone as wide as the sun, and she watches him in shock as his fingers sneak down her throat—deep. He keeps going, watching her eyes, her top teeth grazing the top of his hand, until he senses the moment at which she might gag—her tongue putting a sudden, wary pressure on the pads of his fingers and her breath catching in her throat. He knows that, even at this point, if he applied the correct pressure, or simply made her wary enough—scared enough—he could have her choking and breathless; at his complete and utter disposal.

_He feels a stirring in his loins at the picture of her legs trembling, her knees colliding with the floor, her weak little body overcome by helplessness with the most minimal effort on his part..._

But he makes himself stop just short of the point of no return, slowly withdrawing his fingers from her mouth and letting the dampness linger around his knuckles, rather than wipe it off. Mary’s mouth stays open for only a second after he’s withdrawn his fingers, and then her lips promptly seal again. Jonathan can see her tongue probing around at the roof of her mouth, trying unsuccessfully to reach—and bring relief to—the stinging, itchy place where his rough skin had irritated the fragile surface of her throat

There are a hundred ways he could take her, at this very moment—the most appealing of which would be on the floor, with her legs thrown over his shoulders and her arms pinned above her head: the position in which he could make her scream in his face with the minimum amount of effort exerted—

_Control._

Captain Jonathan Wolverton Randall breathes in, and then breathes out again. Not yet. There will be time for _that_ later. First, for the experiment; for the test of his willpower.

He takes her nightgown off, first, and then removes his nightshirt, casting the white ghost-like fabric aside onto the rug. Promptly, at the sight of her little body fighting the chill of the room, and the quickness with which her arms rise up to cover her little chest, Jonathan feels himself grow hard. Now, Mary is fighting a two-front battle: against her own insecurity, and the shock that has paralyzed her at the sight of him. The innermost part of Jonathan, sitting on that remote observatory throne inside his mind, smirks, taking immense pleasure in her reaction. He grows harder, yet, and Mary averts her watery eyes.

He lays her down on the bed and efficiently wedges his thigh between her knees, to keep her from closing her legs. He doesn’t bother to get under the covers, but pulls one of the pillows out from underneath the comforter, and situates it under the small arch of the girl’s back, his breathing already labored at the sight of her. With his hands he uncrosses her arms from over her chest, and pins her wrists carefully to the bed.

“Trust me,” he tells her, looking down at her pale, open and frightened face.

 _No,_ Mary thinks to herself, suddenly, her shape at the reality of the thought causing her eyes to grow moist again.

She doesn’t have to lie to him aloud, though, because Jonathan doesn’t wait for a response.

He enters her in one sharp and merciless stroke and, startled, the girl lets out a whimper, a high-pitched exhale through her nose, her head snapping sharply to the side and her eyes clenching closed. Jonathan feels his eyelids fluttering for a series of distinct moments as he feels her warm tightness around himself, not quite like anything he’s felt before, and becomes—within the course of a mere second—irreversibly enamored with it.

He moves inside her for a minute, varying the length and intensity of his strokes, trying to elicit something from the girl. But she remains resolute in her silence, with the exception of a few whimpers, her fingers clenching and unclenching against the blankets. Her body seems to have no strength at all, and with every push, her midsection caves to the pressure of Jonathan’s hips, shifting away from him—a reaction which has an effect not entirely unarousing, but a bit too different from the usual resistance to be to Jonathan’s liking.

“Mary,” he says hoarsely, his pride at having resisted harming her for so long quickly being overtaken and threatened by his body’s need for release. One of his hands climbs to the side of her face, pressing it away from the blankets and towards his. “Mary, look at me.”

He presses forward into her body again, her walls still yet to fully open to his significant intrusion: a narrow tube of hot, red resistance that would be nothing short of heaven if he weren’t bridled to _caution_ as he remains, now. Grinding his teeth together and grunting again, he nudges further into her, grinding his hips roughly against the fragile skin of her inner thighs, and more sharply, than he has up until now. And at last, gasping slightly, his little wife does look at him, her eyes significantly more dry than before.

Momentarily, he thinks that this is going to work. But then, just as promptly, something turns pale inside of him, and all at once, with the look of… almost… _trust_ (the audacious, foolish child) in Mary’s eyes, he’s very much in danger of becoming soft inside of her.

And that, he cannot have.

Something about going through with his goal from before seems decidedly undesirable, now. The best he can do at this point is to finish it as quickly as possible. Aware that his time is short, Jonathan deliberates for a split second, while he still has the ability to think clearly, searching his mind for something, anything, that will be _just enough_ , but won’t hurt her too badly.

It comes to him—simply, straightforwardly—and he lowers his mouth to the girl’s small, undeveloped breast, biting down every so slightly on the pink nub of flesh in its center—just enough to cause Mary to whine protractedly in equal parts surprise and discomfort.

He’d been foolish to believe this would amount to enough. But it’s the opposite, and instead of recovering his footing and finishing off the task at hand—and thus proclaiming himself victorious—the sound that his actions had elicited from Mary’s lips makes him _lose_ control, and slip hopelessly backwards. His manhood becomes like a sword inside of her. A sword: the weapon most familiar to him; the weapon which has become like an extension of his arm.

Groaning, he pulls out of her, and flips her little body over with no effort whatsoever, and slicks his manhood with the lavender water on the bedside table. Now, the pillow is situated beneath her hips, propping her body up perfectly for him. Mary, her head heavy, and finding it a challenge to breathe with her face pressed into the covers, tries to turn around, but Jonathan, his tongue pressing ferociously at the corner of his mouth, pushes his hand down against the small of her back, effectively inhibiting any further movement.

“John?” she manages anxiously, breathing hard and speaking in a panicked, high voice which is equal parts annoying and music to his ears. “What are you—”

The moment he first thrusts into her, the power he possesses over his voice buckles and shatters, the sound that tears from his throat unlike anything he’s ever heard before. His body, in kind, folds over Mary’s back and presses her further down into the mattress as his senses dissolve into a jumble of mismatched threads.

It takes the girl a moment to register what has happened. Jonathan had been breathing loudly, gripping her hip bones, and then… and then…

Her confusion and the sudden, burning pain in a place she’d never before imagined a man would desire to stick himself, mingle and manifest themselves in the form of a climbing, protracted wail. Within another two seconds, she’s begun to nothing short of shriek into the pillow, her limbs shaking and stiff. The sight brings a thrill to Jonathan, and his eyelids have begun to flutter in anticipation again, as he pulls slowly out of her, savoring her tenseness, and then plows forward again, faster this time, resulting in a muffled whimper, and yet another yowl, climbing to a piercing scream.

Mary’s legs kick against the mattress to no avail and Jonathan, chuckling in extreme pleasure, shoves her face down into the pillow and thrusts sharply in and out of her. His strength finally climbs to the level he’s accustomed to, his body only urged onward indefinitely by the girl’s sounds—now, she’s begun crying with the incessantness and pitch of a newborn.

She shrieks painfully with his every twitch and shift, the only thought in her tortured, oxygen-deprived head being that her back is going to break.

* * *

Four levels below, Bertha hears the sound of the young Mistress’s screams. She hadn’t been sleeping before, but the shock of the sound is enough to jolt her back into her senses with such force that it seems as though she had been caught in a haze of dreams just moments before.

For the past few nights, she’s sat up later than usual, worried that something just like this would happen, now that the master and Mary had begun sleeping in the same room. Yet, the dangerous, optimistic part of her had continued to put off the imminence of something unsavory taking place, and the terrible sound--nothing short of the sound of a squealing pig being led to the slaughter—emanating from upstairs is enough to startle her to tears.

Without thinking twice, Bertha slips her feet into the slippers that sit beside her bed, and, taking up the candelabra on her bedside table, quickly hurries across the cold dusty floor of her basement room and out into the servants’ corridor. She hurries down it towards the stairs, holding the candelabra in front of her to light the dim way.

But before she can reach the foot of the stairs, the butler Stephen materializes, like a ghost, at her side, and blocks her way. He looks down at her with grave, sad eyes, and shakes his head back and forth. Refusing to listen to him, she tries to push past him, but with a hand on her shoulder, he effectively makes it understood that she will not take a single step further.

“It’s not our place,” he whispers under his breath, the candlelight flickering in his eyes, the flames seemingly moved to dance so wildly by the unhinged nature of the girl’s screams, upstairs. 

It’s clear to Bertha that Stephen would kill the bastard himself if it wouldn’t mean certain death, in return. She steels her face against his offense, prepared to defy him until the very end. But then, with another piercing scream from overhead, her face crumbles in hopelessness, and her knees give out as she slumps forward to sob into the butler’s chest.

With a dark look towards the door at the top of the servants; stairs, Stephen turns and leads his old companion back in the direction of her room.

* * *

It takes only one minute after the much-needed adjustment of position and tactics for Jonathan to reach that coveted singularity of bliss. With a thoroughly satisfied sigh, he lifts himself off of the girl, and kneels back between her splayed legs, looking down at her as his hand wraps around her ankle: motionless and crying hoarsely before him, all the effort her body can muster already spent on the futile protestations of the last sixty seconds.

Mary’s body is aching, paralyzed and dead-seeming apart from a series of frequent spasms that overtake her and make her think--remote from herself--that she might vomit, or suddenly die at any moment.

Jonathan’s hand tightens around her thin, limp little ankle. Though the evidence of his climax is still hot in the air, he isn’t satisfied yet. He needs… _more_. While something about his exertions had been physically gratifying, another part of his body--a compartmentalized itch that could be placed in any number of joints at any given second--still requires fulfillment.

No longer acting on pure instinct, he turns Mary over once more, more gently, this time, taking her up in his arms and embracing her tightly to his body before lowering her again to the mattress. Her eyes, too weak to protest, fall immediately upon his own, and he places his hands on either side of her head as he lowers his mouth to hers and kisses her like a lover would: gently, tenderly… the way his brother would have kissed her.

The next interval of time is nothing at all like the strenuous experience with Jamie Fraser in Wentworth Prison. This time, Jonathan does lift one of her legs up, hooking her ankle over his shoulder, and lifting her other knee to sit securely against his side. 

At this angle of extreme vulnerability, he enters her and moves slowly. “Close your eyes,” he mumbles, a gentle demand which she obeys without question, her face blank, not even her eyebrows twitching with a hint of exertion. “Think of Alex,” he mumbles. “My love… my love…” Tenderly and quietly, he kisses her mouth, tracing her lips gently with the tip of his tongue. It doesn't take long before the child moans weakly into his mouth, her legs growing stiff and starting to tremble. And for a moment, Jonathan, himself, seems to evaporate into a different place, not quite himself.

When she comes, it’s more of a weak and desperate surrender of her body than an expression of pleasure. She feels numb and exhausted; separate from her body, but still trapped inside her head. Her torso shudders and lifts itself up towards the male body hovering over her, wasting the last of her strength until she at last settles into the mattress, utterly spent of her every resource.

Her soft and fast-fading moan calls Jonathan back into his body, just in time to reap the second part of his pleasure, which had been lacking before, as he watches her crumble underneath him. His hazel eyes lose any hint of warmth or satisfaction as he looks at her fluttering eyelids and waits, and the creases in his face deepen, as though he ages a great many years in the space of a fraction of a second.

When her eyes open, her face falls in stages into a pit of irrevocable shame, and after another moment, summoning what little strength she has left, her body slumps over, away from him, and she curls up around herself, wincing and sobbing painfully.

Having no further action to take, Jonathan leaves her alone, and lays down on the other side of the bed. A quiet sort of satisfaction, the likes of which one gets after a long day of physical labor, settles heavily over him.

Not long afterward, Mary tries to sneak out of the bed without his notice. Jonathan considers letting her go, but before she’s even made it to the foot of the bed, she’s released two whimpers, and two rather obvious brushing sounds of her feet against the floor accompanying an apparent limp, and he decides that it would take a significantly better effort than that to earn his mercy.

“Where are you going?” he says to her, letting her reach the door before revealing his wakefulness to her. His voice has the most thrilling effect on the girl, who freezes, her back trembling and her body swaying, so that she is forced to steady herself against the wall.

Without turning back to him, she whispers, just loudly enough for him to hear: “To bed.”

“This is your bed now,” he says, almost tempted to laugh.

But the girl dares to resist him a moment longer, continuing to stand there with her back to him, motionless, but making no sign of yielding to his will. Annoyed by the chill, the Captain stands from the bed and goes to her, looking down at her face, at her averted eyes, flickering with spite and fear… but a fear that brings him no gratification.

In a moment, he is overtaken with incomprehensible and unnameable rage. He grabs her face and kisses her forcefully, shoving his teeth against hers and prying at her jaw. She squirms and whimpers again, her hands pressing at his chest in an effort to escape him, but her efforts are nothing against him. After another minute of hammering at the roof of her mouth with his tongue, it is Jonathan who pulls away, his hazel eyes boring into hers.

“What do you want,” he says through gritted teeth. It would be impossible for Mary to know that, underneath the thunderous tone of voice and intimidating posture that accompanied his words, they made up a genuine plea.

Her face promptly splinters and, through her sudden tears, she tells the truth with a wail, “ _I want Alex!_ ”

In the blink of an eye, Jonathan’s arm has extended and his flat, rough hand makes hard, ruthless contact with the side of her face. She nearly stumbles to the floor, but he half-lunges and catches her before she can fall, pushing her back against the wall. Clutching at her face, she cringes away from him, trembling but not crying.

But then, just seconds later, she takes the most unexpected course of action: she shuffles away from the wall and towards Jonathan, wrapping her small, thin arms around him and embracing him, mumbling sobbed apologies into his chest.

The Captain, after recovering the initial shock of Mary’s actions, finds too many similarities between this current position, and that first night when the miserable child had clung to his nightshirt and soaked it through with her tears. So, before the pitiful display can escalate any further, he shoves the girl’s little body against the wall again, by her neck, this time, choking her and extracting a great amount of enjoyment out of the bulging of her eyes, and the dark drooping of her mouth as she attempts to breathe.

As he shoves himself between her legs yet again, he considers that, maybe, he should just finish the poor creature off right now; tighten his grip on her small, drooping throat and end her. That would put her out of her misery, and bury his temptation once and for all.

But, as he hears her cries and he shoves himself into her to the hilt again and again, he knows that giving her up to death would be an impossible feat. He… _needs_ her. Needs to keep her with him. And he’s going to keep her with him for as long as he is able.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well… I suppose there isn’t much to say after that. That was perverse on multiple levels. I’m sure you noticed, but I did want to point out that Jonathan avoids kissing Mary until the point at which he’s manipulating her to think of Alex. I think that during all of this, it wouldn’t be too far-off to guess that Jonathan, in his own way, is also thinking of Alex. I don’t believe that he and his younger brother had a sexual history of any kind, but that doesn't mean the thought of him can’t be made, on some level, sexual. Especially by someone such as Jonathan, whose habits in the bedroom are… as we just witnessed… less than savory.
> 
> I must confess I feel quite rattled, at the moment. And though I’ve been waiting forever to write this chapter, my fingers—and my mind—need to rest a bit. Thank you so much for reading, and let me know what you thought about… all this… in the comments.
> 
> Queen_Consort_Of_Autumn  
> Monday 18 January 2021


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